Friday, January 4, 2013

US Fiscal Cliff

Friday 4th January 2012/ac

US Fiscal Cliff

The US fiscal cliff has been avoided, but the fundamental problems are alive and well. The US Budget continues to go deeper and deeper into unsustainable debt, and US society has a depressing level of real poverty and inequality.

As of November 2012 an astonishing 47.7 million Americans were receiving taxpayer funded food stamps. One in four American children is on food stamps, and it is projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they turn 18.

The US Census Bureau says the number of Americans living in poverty increased to a record high of 49.7 million last year- an increase of about 6 million in just the past 4 years.

Remarkably, instead of prioritising finding jobs and opportunities for Americans of all backgrounds who are living in poverty, the US Congress imports 100,000 migrants into the US every 30 days- over 1 million a year. It is a recipe for ongoing misery, poverty, and a massive infrastructure- driven national debt which continues to be a burden to both the US and the global economy.

Kelvin Thomson MP
Federal Labor Member for Wills

16 comments:

  1. And we are doing much the same to single parents, pity about that

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  2. A depressing story indeed. Driven by many factors such as the vagaries of the world economy, the decline of 'infinite' cheap resources...
    And then there's the truly Cosmic expenses incurred in military escapades while making basic things like health care out of reach for many people.
    We're only avoiding the same by spending the wealth stashed away in our resources.

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  3. The US is at the point of collapse,brought on by greed driven politics,resource exploitation, the inability to control population, the sheer waste of money spent on space exploration, the penchant for war and selfishness ( Google pays .o3 % tax - what a laugh) This is also being exhibited here in Australia, particularly by those currently ruling in the Liberal Party who would get rid of the carbon and mining tax.

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  4. Betraying the trust and turning their back on the wishes of their constituents, Independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor allowed the Rudd / Gillard Governments to come to power in 2007, which in turn allowed the Gillard Labor Government and the Greens to overturn John Howard's successful Pacific Solution. The new Labor / Greens policy of more "humane treatment" of refugees immediately unleashed a tidal wave of boats which eventually caused the deaths of over 1000 asylum seekers and Opposition Immigration Minister Scott Morrison estimates that it has cost our country $4.7 billion during just the past three years
    This new "Humane " policy insanity has allowed to date, 32,194, mostly young men from violent primitive Middle Eastern or North African countries that are extremely anti-western, and who call for the overthrow of the Jewish State to arrive here under Labor's desperate plan to accommodate the overflowing refugee centres. According to a recent interview on ABC TV, the employment figure for Muslim men is only 6% after 5 years in Australia and so 94 % would be drawing CentreLink benefits of some type. They are also the mostly likely to have poor health and the ones most likely to have big families and their children are less likely to be employed, so the burden to the treasury in the coming years will be absolutely staggering.
    This ongoing cost to our treasury will be burdened even further as there is no end to the tidal wave of asylum numbers diminishing until the next election, and even then it will take time to place the appropriate controls in place. And the hole in the budget will be so large it will doubtful if any future government will be able to overcome the continuing financial drain by those who will not be employed and who have large families.
    The future social and monetary costs to our country will be especially painful when our mineral boom slows down, which it will for one because of the massive finds of iron or ore and other minerals in Siberia which is a just stones throw from China's factories. The cost advantages for China buying Siberian minerals both in labour and transportation are enormous. Also new mineral finds in Mongolia will make it another player with a huge cost advantage over Australian minerals.
    Australia also has over $150 billion in net debt and with a recession looming our economy is facing some major problems.
    As of now we have hospitals, schools and roads without enough funds and we are even cutting back of medical research, and believe it or not we are slashing our already pitiful defence budget. much to the annoyance of the U.S. which is already providing almost all of our defence.
    Government funding for chemotherapy drugs and other essential medicines and procedures have or will be cut and many Australian families, especially those with large medical bills are struggling to survive.
    Every day there are some 350,000 babies born and most are born in the third world. As for Australia taking more refugees - just how many more can we take? 100,000? 500,000? A million? 5 million? Keeping in mind that these refugees can bring in three or more family members. Of course the Greens with their insane open borders "let absolutely everyone in" policy. would never place a cap on the numbers no matter how many came. And funding for their Marxist ideological insanities will be never a problem for the Greens because they will never hold government and so it is never even considered.

    City of Greater Dandenong Councilor, Peter Brown speaking about the Muslim African refugee crime wave in Dandenong."Australia should not be the repository for global social and ethnic problems in the misguided belief that we can solve them, because as the world population increases beyond the already unsustainable levels more pressure will be placed on Australia to be a universal agent of global multicultural support. We will be doomed to failure... "


    Kman.

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    Replies
    1. Never mind a few refugees. What about the legal immigrants up around 200,000. Compare that to the 32,000 refugees. Count the consumers, not to language.

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  5. I have just been reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Lacuna" about the Trotsky, the war, and post war horror of the Un-american - Joe McCarthy horrors.
    In the 1950s, perchance I read in there that the population of the USA at that time was 140 million ! Now they are over 300 million and , as Kelvin says, bringing in 100,000 new people every month !!
    Everything is predicated on GROWTH of population and they(we) don't know how to stop.

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  6. The U.S. is driven by greed and exploitation eh?
    25 % of the anti American UN budget is also ponied up by the USA. And let's forget the cost of $100 billion p/a for defending the socialist countries of Europe. And in 2009, U.S. bank lending to Europe totalled $1.5 trillion.
    And for more than 50 years US Aid has fed approximately 3 billion people in 150 countries and that includes just about all socialist countries and America's enemies in the Middle East and North Korea . And of course the World bank is bankrolled mostly by the US and U.S. foreign aid is greater than most of the rest of the world combined.

    Australians need to realize that the United States stands almost alone in the war on terrorism and we Australians are completely dependent on America's military might for our defence. We live behind the guns of the U.S. 7th. Fleet and under the America nuclear shield.The fact is that the Australian ADF - total numbers 57,000 can not fight it's way out of the proverbial paper bag without US support as evidenced in the minuscule police action by our forces in East Timor.

    "U.S. military power has been in building and sustaining the present liberal international order.That order has rested significantly on the U.S. ability to provide security in parts of the world, such as Europe and Asia, that had known endless cycles of warfare before the arrival of the United States. The world’s free-trade, free-market economy has depended on America’s ability to keep trade routes open, even during times of conflict.
    Thomas Sewell once said....
    "How many times, in its thousands of years of history, has Europe gone 60 years without a major war, as it has since World War II? That peace has been due to American nuclear weapons, which was all that could deter the Soviet Union's armies from marching right across Europe to the Atlantic Ocean.


    Canadian journalist Mark Steyn once said about self-appointed moralists -"safe inside the citadel of Western freedom, economic propriety, and the United States military, who, from the very ramparts they damn, praise the enemy ramming the gates below."
    Without America there is no free world!

    And K.D.Afford -your comment is both stupid and offensive. You obviously are just another of Lenin's {Idiots of the West"

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  7. As the USA,like Australia,has a sovereign currency,the federal government (issuer of the currency)can buy anything which is available for sale in that currency without undertaking any debt whatsoever .This includes such badly needed schemes as a sensible national health system, infrastructure improvements,a job guarantee to mop up the unemployed and a comprehensive social security safety net independent of private malpractice.

    Thus,the budget deficit is a furphy.The USA is in such a parlous state due to neo-liberal economics,a corrupt political system,a deliberate winding back of government regulation over many years and a president who is nothing more than a pathetic tool of the FIRE sector.Does this sound a bit like Oz?

    What I have written is only a small part of Modern Monetary Theory and we Australians have a world leading exponent of that light at the end of the tunnel in Professor Bill Mitchell whose website, billyblog, is well worth reading and paying attention to,Kelvin.

    So forget Mr Swan et al's crazy dreams of surplus as be all and end all.That is cave man economics with about the same ethical standards as the troglodytes.

    Podargus

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  8. I agree with all the above comments but today's news
    that Australia has a new world record
    http://wwos.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8588700
    Guinness World Record for the most simultaneous burnouts - although it was hard to confirm it through the thick blanket of smoke.
    Has made me sick to my teeth to be a citizen of a country where people celebrate such an event.
    Global swarming by Global idiots causes global warming, many of them may live to regret their pollution excesses.

    Ganda

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  9. I love Kelvin Thomson's 14-point plan to limit Australia's population to a sustainable size. We need to reduce skilled immigration into Australia. Perhaps the US people could learn from this plan for their own sustainability. The solutions rest with people power - with people focusing on and demanding solutions (what they know and feel to be right and fair).

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  10. We are creating a globalized economy in an already overpopulated world. Many of the jobs that used to employ many Americans with dignity have been exported to sweatshops in poorer nations... it makes more wealth for a privileged few and is degrading for everyone else.

    The problem is global and will ultimately be felt globally.

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  11. Kelvin, you are a welcome change for Labor and I follow your path with great interest. What you do and say about population and the environment makes sense and long live common sense. However what labor has done to this countries finances makes no sense. The debt Australia now has is dangerous in terms of future generations and the GFC cannot be blamed for that. You are right to imply the USA is in deep trouble and when it's collapse comes, as it surely will, the world will descend into a deep depression because the American folly is reproduced elsewhere too. I am sorry to say that Labor is incapable of properly running this country although there are bright stars like yourself available. Thank you.

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  12. The United States has a legal immigration program of well over 1 million per year, and many illegal aliens. Why add so many people, with poverty already and high unemployment? The Golden Age of America's immigration is over. Going to the USA was a chance, for many centuries, to start a new life, free from persecution, poverty, etc to a land of opportunities. These days are over, and until the US government implements a plan to stop growth, the people will be denied what past generations achieved.

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  13. Hear, hear Kelvin!
    Unfortunately our government is doing exactly the same thing.
    I presume you are the lone dissenting parliamentarian on this issue?
    You're doing a superb job pushing a wheelbarrow-full of manure up Capital Hill. You're a courageous man.

    Peterslaz

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  14. America's greed for economic growth at all costs, by their invasion of Iraq and other countries, should be a lesson for all times. Once a great nation, the USA was a sanctuary for many dispossessed and impoverished, persecuted peoples. Many gained opportunities and wealth from migrating to the "New World". It seems that people assume that this migration experience can be perpetuated for all times - and that when it comes to human activities, there are no limits! To continue to ramp up immigration at a time of overpopulation, and increasing scarcities, has created a new developing country!

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  15. The American Dream has been on life support ever since they exported so many of their manufacturing jobs --- which makes for bigger profits for a few and nothing for the many. Kelvin, you must understand that there is a reason why they continue to import people and export jobs. It's the perfect formula for the plutocrats to drive down their costs --- when there are a sufficient number of people who are desperate for employment, hiring can sometimes be cheaper than owning slaves!

    Overpopulation is good for those on top...

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