A recent survey in Texas suggested that new gun owners are more likely to support former Vice President Joe Biden than President Donald Trump in this year’s election. There is little evidence to support this, particularly as polls have been so widely off the mark when it comes to support for President Trump and when it comes to gun ownership in general. In both instances, individuals may be more reluctant to share their political support or gun ownership status with strangers on the phone, due at least in part to a desire for privacy and a fear of the kind of shaming that is all too common in our society.
But let’s say this were true: that new gun owners, a large share of whom are women or minorities, are more likely to vote for Biden in November. Despite taking the step to exercise their Second Amendment rights and legally purchase a firearm, these individuals may be making their voting decisions based on a whole host of other policy issues. Protecting their newly-secured firearm and the freedom that allowed them to purchase it may not be something they have considered.
That is a mistake. Many new gun owners were surprised at just how difficult it is to purchase a firearm in their state. Any new owners who purchased their firearms at a retailer were required at a minimum to submit to an FBI background check and to abide by the federal prohibitions as well as a myriad of state and local regulations such as waiting periods or limits on what types of firearms they were allowed to purchase.
Under “President Biden,” these existing laws and regulations would be multiplied and expanded in an attempt to squeeze the right to bear arms out of existence. If he had his way, the most popular type of rifle – the Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR) – would be banned, despite the fact the last time they were banned, crime didn’t go down. The MSRs that people already own would be “bought back” or forcibly registered under the onerous law that regulates items like fully-automatic machine guns.
The former vice president doesn’t think that you, as a gun owner, should be able to decide the amount of ammunition in your handgun, so your capacity would be arbitrarily limited according to what he thinks is appropriate. Forget about the fact that this limit will do nothing to keep your communities safe. He also doesn’t want you to be able to purchase your ammunition online, limiting your choices as a consumer.
He doesn’t think you should make the decision on the timing of purchasing firearms. He wants to make that decision for you and limit you to one gun a month, only after you get a license from your state to purchase it. And that one gun would have to be stored how he thinks is best for you and your household, regardless of your individual situation.
New gun owners, or those interested in protecting their rights to become gun owners if they so wish, need to be aware of the implications of voting for Biden in November. A vote for Biden is a vote against your Constitutional right to protect yourself, your loved ones and your property. It’s as simple as that.
Elizabeth McGuigan is Director of Legislative and Policy Research at the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Joe Braindead won’t last 6 months it will be Kami the Commie calling for Constitutional infringements.
Watching the Democrat old guard during all this reminds me of the Kaiser and leftovers of the imperial German faction, when the Nazis took over. They’ll put old joe out in some field somewhere where he can pretend to be relevant.
He’ll be in charge of the MySpace page!
My what???
(Sarc)
Joe will last exactly 2 years and one day.
At that point CommaLa will take over. That will allow her to stand for 2 elections and “rule”for 10 years.
Swell
Joe will, effectively, be VP from day 1.
The problem is a doddering fool with dementia will be the public face of the administration, meeting with foreign leaders and presiding over public functions. I don’t see how he can successfully stammer through his first State of the Union address.
I don’t see why you’d think that would be a problem, nobody sees him NOW, and he is theoretically running for some office.
You can also look at Bidens “gunsafety” section of his site to see what ultimately means a gun confiscation. It read a lot more like Harris than Biden.
It’s literally the destruction of the 2nd amendment.
If so, it will disappear when the new Justice is confirmed. None of his plans is Constitutional.
Until he adds two or four more justices to SCOTUS. Then it won’t be just gun rights we’ll see disappear.
“Protecting their newly-secured firearm and the freedom that allowed them to purchase it may not be something they have considered.”
Or, having secured protection for themselves, they may not give rat’s ass about other people having the same freedom. If they didn’t have a “laws for thee and not for me” streak, they wouldn’t be voting Democrat in the first place. Not that the GOP is completely above that, but they are the party of Poll taxes and the equivalent measures to ensure the common rabble are not armed.
This.
The last thing people who ran out bought their first gun under a cloud of fear want is other people to have guns.
These people want the door slammed shut now that they have theirs.
Beware of the blanket generalization.
No group is monolithic in it’s views and opinions. But there are average tendencies.
Biden gets elected and you won’t have to worry about the 2A because the Republic will disintegrate.
Not because Biden is a Commie but because this country can’t take a senile guy or a frothing at the mouth Leftist in charge considering the shit we need to get through to avoid total economic devastation in the coming couple of years.
And if we get total economic devastation (which is probably more likely than not right now) you WILL get a police state on the other side of that. Such an outcome is unavoidable if SHTF because the vast majority of people will not just embrace it, they’ll demand it.
In other news: The Louisville protests are back on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Toybi5QjEkY
Burn Loot Murder !
[B]iden [L]ynch [M]ob is my personal favorite these days.
“Biden gets elected and you won’t have to worry about the 2A because the Republic will disintegrate.
Not because Biden is a Commie but because this country can’t take a senile guy or a frothing at the mouth Leftist in charge considering the shit we need to get through to avoid total economic devastation in the coming couple of years.”
The “Frothing at the mouth Leftist” will do as she is told and stack SCOTUS with 4 additional justices, if they control the WH and Senate. And that’s a real possibility if ACB is seated by Trump. (I’ve been seeing a *bunch* of left-wing articles demanding just that.)
Then the Republic may well disintegrate since we will not accept that. If in the following election cycle we don’t win, then we have the police state you and I fear, that the Leftists will leap for joy over…
strych9,
You have hinted at this before. You seem like a smart person. Can you elaborate a bit or point me to another resource which explains this apparent looming economic catastrophe?
Alternatively, if you have already explained it in detail (either on this site or somewhere else), can you provide a link to your previous explanation?
Thank you in advance.
Foreclosures are skyrocketing. Bankruptcies as well, with people out of work.
A substantial percent of investments are tied in some ways to mortgages. Nothing good comes out of that besides investors with cash snapping up foreclosed properties who’s value is now far below what it was before the pandemic…
Uncommon: Book incoming, your pos.
What Geoff says here is kinda the ultra short sparks-notes on it.
Essentially at this point the government has been propping up three major things, and has been for quite a while, the stock market, mortgages and by extension the mortgage backed security/derivative markets.
The problem with that is multifaceted in ways I’m not going to get into but suffice to say it has kept the investment class happy. It’s also kept pensions afloat and inflated housing prices significantly. Much of what younger people are ticked about is something that Boomers miss because what’s happened in many cases is that younger people have been priced out of the housing and investment markets by this artificial growth by they very policies that benefit retirees and other older folks who are better established. Bitch about envy all you want but piss off that big of a group of people long enough and they’ll eat you alive. That’s kind of another issue though.
Back to the overall picture here: you can see a bit of this in the 70.5% inflation rate since 1995. Money has lost most of it’s value, like 95% or a bit more since 1940 but invested people and those with pensions have been kept afloat by these policies and managed to outpace the inflation because it’s what’s driving the value of their pensions and investments. This cannot last and it’s created structural issues in the overall economy, they’ve made some parts of the economy “brittle”. At the same time off-shoring has done the same thing to other sectors. In part this is what has created the “service economy”.
At this point what the “lockdowns” have done is cripple small business across a bunch of sectors, but one way or another most small businesses are service sector in reality even if not on paper. That’s a problem because 99.7% of the businesses out there are, by the regular definition, “small businesses” (<500 employees). Numerous large banks and other financial companies companies have analyzed 2020, as has the IRS. They all paint a bleak picture, suggesting that at this point 50-60% of small business is gone. Gone, not coming back. No reopening. The IRS projects that if this continues until November that number goes to 80%.
This issue is partially masked by the fact that "non-essential" court processes (bankruptcies for example) are not going forward in many places because the courts are not operating these "non-essential" services. The result of this is that, like a cartoon character, we've run off a cliff but are in mid-air running comically(?) and not yet falling. When the economy "reopens" the fall will happen and probably be mostly in a single quarter, or at least we'll get a picture of just how bad off we are at that point and the markets will be, uh, "roiled". At that point you're talking a huge number of bankruptcies, foreclosures and evictions. Like numbers we can't really think about. Tens of millions of each. All at once. Kiss that tax revenue goodbye and start looking at muni and states unable to pay obligations too. Ouch.
The fact that the country has, in some ways, been in "stasis" for six months hides this but also prevents normal business adjustments that would be possible in normal times. Instead the problem gets bigger and we stay frozen. This is a fucking-grade-A-disaster waiting to uncork on us. It's possible that this could unravel in a way that entirely freezes the credit markets because it fucks the banks in a way they cannot handle all at once. I mean, if tens of millions of renters pay no rent for months and then find out there is no job to go back to landlords get foreclosed on but there's not really anyone to buy these properties so the banks are fucked. Without a bailout they can't loan money and without short-term credit many things like heavy transport do not run. (See the airline industry for the tip of this potential iceberg.) Europe is too fucked to bailout large banks. We're close to that point too. We're potentially looking at a Greek Banking Crisis on a level we can't imagine but really, it's a slightly different rerun of the collapse of the Wiemar Republic but much faster and across the entire Western world as well as much of the rest of the world.
When everything comes to a halt like that you'll likely get a standard Keynesian response to engage in "stimulus" to "prime the pump" and "get money flowing through the pipes". The problem is, that as I said above, in this analogy most of the pipes are just gone. That leads to massive inflation and could crash the currency and then we're in real trouble.
There is a real possibility of a "Greater Depression" here. I'm talking bread lines with no bread. Literally, because we're not shipping the stuff to make it.
As I put it in a post to Geoff on an article yesterday: “Pensions and retirements wiped out, markets crash, credit freezes world-wide, shipping stops and we’ve got food and medical shortages with no production, no shipping and no way to pay for it regardless because we’ve killed the Golden Goose that generates the resources to buy stuff and we don’t make anything any more. Oh, and no way to value real property either thanks to a worthless currency… so that real estate you own free-and-clear? LOL. You can’t move it but guess who can? Uncle Sam still needs something to “keep the lights on” and if your cash is worthless, well, like a crack-dealer “What else ya got?”.”
This should be a Gold bug’s wet dream. Yet that market is turning bearish. This is troublesome. If the Au bugs are seeing SHTF so badly that Au isn’t a good enough hedge… what is? Nothing. Gold never was really that great but that market is a decent gauge of how more conservatively minded investors think and there should be a run TO that market even from traditionalists who aren’t Au bugs. Instead there’s actually a bit of a run to crypto and not by the usual players, by companies looking to protect themselves from a potential “bail in” (having to just write off debt because the current currency is worthless and can’t be used for those obligations). That’s not surprising considering that crypto isn’t something government has figured out how to fuck with to the level it can with regular currencies. Well, not yet at least.
And this is exactly the kind of turmoil that just begs for a “strong guiding hand” as opposed to an “invisible hand”. It’s how authoritarian regimes often come to power because people are so scared they ask for it. That old statement “Take my money!” becomes “Take my freedom!” pretty damn quick.
And if it happens to most of the world there’s no bailout possible only a world-wide bail-in and at that point there goes whatever might be left of any pensions and investments that remain.
It doesn’t have to go down this way but more and more I’m concerned that it will because virtually no one is willing to talk about this like an adult. It’s all Covid and riots. Trump and Biden. Mask vs no masks. But even if we roll through 2020’s election cycle with no further issues and CoV-2 disappears Nov 4th we still have to deal with all this shit and it’s HUGE mess to clean up. And it all has a “point of no return” built into it. Because we’re in “stasis” we can’t know if we’ve hit that or not but what I would say is that under no circumstances can doing smart things now hurt us. They may not save us from a disaster but smart things now can seriously lessen the effects and put us in a position to rebounds faster.
strych9,
Outstanding — thank you for the detailed explanation!
“A loaf of bread will buy a bag of gold.” –Larry Norman, derived from Revelation 6:6.
You are one of three people here I’d read a comment that long from. My thoughts are less organized but similar. I have always been a prepper, albeit less than hardcore, but thinking the reckoning was a few years off. Now, I am second guessing all of my decisions and preps and finding them suboptimal (too little, too late, inefficient, etc) because the reckoning seems so much closer and so much more real. Right now I am trying to live in the moment and take in a few more breaths of “not totally screwed yet”.
To the housing situation, add that 52% of 18-29 are living with parents. It’s a combination of inability to afford inflated prices and the lack of ability to save and have sufficient income. A combination of sexual frustration (living with Mommy isn’t hot), lack of responsibility, and little prospect for improvement means a steady supply of demonstrators and rioters.
@Anymouse:
You touch part of this with a pin. Again, a book here and if you read previous comments I’ve made here go back to what I’ve said about “see paw, know lion” pattern recognition in our brains for how portions of this work in terms of extrapolating a comment or behavior of a few into those of a whole group.
[Note: What I am about to say here is going to seem harsh at times. This is not a voicing of support for the position. It’s an observation and academic examination of the issue. However, I’m going to use terms like “Boomer”, “you”, “ya’ll” and “Millennial” here in the general sense. None of the groups is monolithic so this isn’t a personal attack on any one person here but these problems are wide-spread enough that this fact has, essentially, ceased to matter because generational warfare, as the name would suggest, is generalized. Again, I DON’T want to see this happen but I know that the opinions below are common and I have a decent idea of why. I don’t detect them often (though they do crop up occasionally from a small group) here on TTAG but they’re VERY common on other websites with far larger reach. That’s not good because guilt by association is terrible and it’s running both ways right now, to the benefit of exactly no one on either side.]
Part of the problem here is perception and generational warfare which just goes round and round circling the drain whether the combatants want to admit it or not. It’s horseshit and it’s self-defeating horseshit at that.
===
A large percentage of younger people feel that Boomers are effectively a generation of Bernie Madoffs. There are not many people <40 who expect to ever get a dime of Social Security, Medicare or a classic pension/retirement and, let's be honest, the rest are fools. Many expect to work until the day they die with zero HOPE of any sort of retirement. They don't expect to ever own a home because they don't expect to be able to afford it. They can barely afford rent at this point, if they can in fact afford rent. For this they blame Boomers for being looters. Looters who essentially bankrupted all the above systems for their own gain and explicitly at the expense of younger people.
A huge number of Millennials got very valid science and business degrees as opposed to "Critical Theory" degrees. The "good degree" holders got fucked just as hard in the Obama years because companies started to require asinine amounts of "real world experience" for entry level positions if you didn't have an "in". Five years experience for Entry Level. How the fuck can you get past that? I know people with Bachelor's in Chem, Biochem, Physics, Math and Finance who were unemployed for years after graduation or worked as bartenders and baristas. They weren’t happy about that. They played by the rules and flat-out rejected SJW bullshit. They still got screwed and then, they feel, got shit on by Boomers who don’t care that the economy was fucked and just want more money pumped into the pyramid schemes of Medicare etc. at the expense of younger folks who are already struggling due to price inflation in everything.
Now why is that? Because there is a vocal sub-set of Boomers who really are self-deluded assholes who have no clue how anything works and are convinced that age makes them right about everything. They are, to be blunt; uneducated, self-important assholes with room temperature IQ’s who were subsidized by a system that is now in decline. Yet they believe, because they are victims of a poor education that was taken over ~1958 that they are somehow special and hard-working and deserve a bunch of shit. They don’t recognize that their 2020 dollar is worth about 21% of the dollars they started saving when they started working and that the next two generations are paying that 79% difference.
These people only care about more money being pumped into the various programs that benefit themselves and they don’t care if anyone else ever gets a dime. Mostly I don’t think they realize that those systems are going to collapse but they also fail to realize that “I paid in” is not an excuse to force other people to pay into a system which is, at this point, extractive. These minority voices are amplified dramatically by the internet. Not only are the people saying these things hyperbolic in a way they probably wouldn’t be in person but a great many websites and media orgs promote such comments with a vote system.
And it’s not just Millennials. While Zoomers were content to rake Millennials over the coals for a few years there the “new normal” has them waking up to reality too. And whom do they blame? Boomers. For the lockdowns, inflation, a destroyed economy. Shit, they can’t even go to class at a university today because of CoV-2 policies designed to protect Boomers from a disease that mostly affects only the very old who have been irresponsible about their health for decades. Zoomers can’t have friends. At my university they run the risk of being arrested and/or thrown out of school if they get caught in a group of TWO and they’re 18-22… which sounds like age discrimination to me. They blame *you* older folks for this. And they’re paying full ride for a shitshow online education because they have no other choice in the modern world and they know it.
On top of that they, like Millennials, realize that this “go to trade school” thing is fucking horseshit. Anyone who says this obviously has a refrigerator temperature level of IQ. $75K/year as a welder’s helper. ROFL, OK BOOMER! Fuckin’ tard. First that’s not true (and it’s not) but on top of that… ‘Cause yeah, in today’s economy what we need is 10 million more each of plumbers, electricians, welders and concrete guys. Ever heard of “supply and demand”? Dafuq are you people? Joe Biden?
Not to mention, the trades are now basically the only area someone with a criminal conviction can get a job. Guess what most of the trades are today? Drug addicts, felons and boozehounds. Is that the group you want your kids and grandkids hanging out with all day? This fact isn’t lost on younger people and mostly they’d rather not associate with people who regularly indulge in methamphetamine.
And turning TO the Boomers. What is their perception of younger folks? Well, overall it doesn’t actually matter because as I said, a small group of vocal assholes sucks all the oxygen out of the room. So the assumption that Zoomers and Millennials have about the opinions of Boomers is that Boomers think everyone under 40 is a “Millennial”, an SJW, lazy, shiftless and irresponsible. No matter what reasonable Boomers say, *ya’ll* are painted with this brush because of the internet.
So overall the perception of a large percentage of young people is that Boomers are, well, unintelligent, out of touch assholes. *You* bitch that we’re lazy but want us to work hard for your Social Security that we’ll never see. You fucked up the economy and the educational system and blame us for it when we either weren’t born or were too young to vote before the damage was done. You blew out pensions and inflated the currency to suicidal levels to support a lifestyle you believe you deserve but which you have not actually earned. You’ve maxed the country’s credit card and shirked the bill, and like the dicks you are, you’re adding insult to injury just for funzies when *you* talk shit to the people who actually have pay that bill. As many people see it, ya’ll drive Audis that we’re paying for.
===
So, now there’s two generations sharpening their knives for the Boomers and STILL a small subset of Boomers run their goddamn mouths/fingers to make this worse because it makes them feel better about themselves and the web amplifies their voices to an extreme level. This makes a conversation impossible and we need that conversation because, as I’ve said before, this goes sideways the way I suggested above (which is a real possibility at this point) the Boomers get hit the hardest because they are too old to recover the way younger people can. This goes sideways badly enough, and again it’s a real possibility at this point, you’re all just a bunch of OFWG in abject poverty and nothing to offer a society packed full of people who already dislike you. That’s not an enviable position and PERSONALLY, I don’t want to see that happen.
And if you made it this far you can see why some of these people don’t care if the system implodes. They’re getting fucked anyway. Massive deflation or just “blowing up the system” sounds great to them. It gives them a reset and screws the “guilty”.
strych9,
Not contesting what you said, I am barley younger than the youngest boomers and have thought these same things for decades, but, does the generational animosity even matter if the economy grinds to halt? Does it even matter if Millenials and Gen Z eat the Boomers before they run out of them and still die from hunger, exposure, and lack of medical care? I don’t think most people even in their 50s think that they are ever going to retire or get more than a small fraction of the money back they had stolen by previous generations by stealing it from the younger generations -that game is likely almost over. Sure X’ers got in when the getting was better but we are just as doomed even if millenials are subsidizing our healthcare now and many of us have more wealth than the younger generations ever will. I suppose there is always the possibility a miracle, maybe several hugely significant technological breakthroughs very very soon or something. I expect to quietly starve, or maybe stroke out, in the cold rather than die shooting surrounded by recently spent cases. One more thing and I am sure you are aware of this, is that the reason the millenials and Zs will never rob a later generation is because that system will have collapsed before they could. Nearly everyone is a banal thief when they can be so without facing it.
“…does the generational animosity even matter if the economy grinds to halt?”
So, let me start by saying that if you bothered (and I don’t suggest that you do) go back and read the longer comments I’ve made over the past few years, on topics ranging from pattern recognition to ethics, you will find that they all actually tie together.
You will also find that in many regards your question here gets to the heart of the matter I’ve been trying to get across in chunks to avoid dropping 50+ pages or a “Buy my book on Amazon!” plug but which an actual discussion of requires a fair bit of background information which most people do not have.
It depends on the context in which you ask this question.
In one sense, no it matters not a whit. If SHTF and people continue to act like this it’s just vengeance for the purpose of emotional catharsis and it serves zero actual real-world purpose. A vengeance system provides neither justice nor actual solutions to problems. It doesn’t fix anything and, in reality, probably makes things markedly worse in the medium and longer terms. In such a case we’re boned and acting out of anger which is only screwing ourselves more… but because we’re acting out of anger we can’t stop.
In another sense, the one I’m hoping takes hold here, yes it matters a great deal. In fact, it might be the most important lesson of the 2020’s. There are some really serious issues that need to be addressed and they cannot be addressed by dogma. These things are intertwined and they all need to be dealt with on some level or another.
The first thing that needs to happen is that the problems need to be laid out and explained. To paraphrase AA/CA/SA/whatever: We have to admit we have a problem before we can even start to address it.
However at that point we also need to find some solutions, and in fact they do exist if we’re smart about this as country, but those solutions won’t be expressed and certainly will not be executed if we simply point fingers at each other. The truth is we’re in trouble as a nation and at this point blaming one generation or another is, at best, academic. Who’s to blame for hitting the iceberg is something we can think about (or not) after we save the fucking ship but right now it’s a waste of time we do not have.
And so in this sense it matters a lot because this generational warfare shit is just a distraction from the real issues at hand. Hannibal ad portus and how he got here exactly doesn’t matter. What matters is what we’re going to do about it. Shitting on each other is something I’m fairly confident won’t provide us the answer.
And, if we’re actually kinda slick about this we not only save the ship but also toss the Left overboard at the same time. Which would be nice for the 2A in more ways than one, especially because if it really does all go to shit the 2A will not matter at all and the people who cling to the idea that it will somehow still matter will be in for a bitter disappointment.
strych9,
As any ethical person should/would, I hope you are right. Maybe I since I have observed the political and cultural inertia longer than you and lost all confidence that things can be turned around. It seems laughably improbable to me, especially at this point. I mean no disrespect when I say this. Can you think of any society that turn around from such ill behavior before disaster struck. I can’t. It’d be nice if there was.
So, Strych, as I understand you, the sky is falling? I have to say I think you’re a little over the edge. Listen, I graduated in 1969 with a degree in Accounting with minors in Economics and Statistics, then promptly began forgetting all about such stuff as I entered an economy where the median family income was around $3000/year. No, I did not forget a zero. By that time my education had left me absolutely convinced Social Security would be long dead, decades before my retirement. Yet the answer never appeared to me to be to burn down neighborhood businesses and shoot cops. Since money was not particularly important to me, I settled for a reasonable salary while the Air Force spent huge bucks teaching me to fly jets, probably the most expensive graduate school in the world. My wife and I planned from day one to fund our own retirement, beginning with avoiding debt to the max extent possible, and building towards a military retirement. The first new car we bought, we kept for 29 years. Jimmy Carter came along and destroyed the value of everybody’s savings, fortunately after we put ours in the market and our home, but those inflation rates dwarfed anything you have dreamed of, along with interest rates which made us really happy we had almost zero debt, essentially a collapsing economy. Plenty of people told us the sky was falling then, too, but we kept on plugging along, doing our jobs and living our lives. We had been married 8 years before we allowed it was time to start a family, and we had a sizable start on our son’s college fund before he was born. Reagan came along and rethought Social Security, and the nation started digging it’s way out of the hole the Dems had dug for us. Now we’re both retired, our kids are working to hard to have time for rioting in the streets, and we have not paid a nickel of interest in 25 years, life is good. In spite of the fact we lived through FAR worse conditions than you are describing. Hell, last year I bought my granddaughter a new Mazda to help her get started in life. No great secrets, just figure out how you can earn a living, prepare for it, do the best job you can, and keep on plugging along, living within your means. If you think voting for someone different is going to make you rich without any work, you will be a slave all your life. Whining about the choices somebody else makes is good for not much, each of us needs to look at our OWN choices, and if you’ve been fucking up all your life, how to start changing *your* ways, as opposed to demanding somebody else take care of you..
Vic:
“Can you think of any society that turn around from such ill behavior before disaster struck.”
The Delian League pulled it off for 74 years against even worse odds and with worse politics.
@Larry:
Words like “if” mean things. Contingency planning is a thing and I said “this doesn’t have to happen”. It’s not a guarantee but it’s a real and growing possibility if we don’t make some reasonable and simple changes that are, at this point, politically impossible.
Further, your analysis makes sense in… a different time. A comparison to 1969 is apples to aardvarks.
First, your memory is faulty. In 1969 the median family income was ~$8,389 accord to the US Census department, approximately about 2.79x what you suggest.
On top of that debt to GDP was 35%. Today it’s 136%. The unemployment rate was 3.5%, today it’s 14.2%. ’69’s GDP grew 3.1%, 2020’s is expected to be -5.0. Benchmarked against 1800 a 1968 dollar was worth $0.38, a 2020 dollar is worth $0.05. Inflation 1968 to present has run 608.2% and in the last 25 years alone it has run at 70.5%.
We’re in a far worse position today to deal with any of this. Particularly with a huge chunk of the economy simply gone with no real-time adjustments possible at this point.
And again, this isn’t “the sky is falling”. It’s a reminder of the sobering realities we face as a nation. There’s NO reason to dance on the edge of this knife but the longer we refuse to admit that there’s a problem the more we will and if we do that long enough, well, the history of the Western Roman Empire tells us what happens.
Also, since you addressed it directly I’ll discuss Medicare in a touch more depth.
In 1970 total Medicare expenditures were $7.5 Billion on a GDP of $4.951 Trillion. In 2018 Medicare expenditures were $796.2 Billion on a GDP of $20.612 Trillion. So over that time the overall economy grew to 4.16 times what it had been while Medicare costs grew by 106 times what they had been.
And we’re growing the rolls. In 1990 13% of America was on Medicare with a population of 250.1 Million people. By 2018 we had 17% of the country on Medicare but our population also grew to 328.2 Million. This means that Medicare enrollees grew from 32.5 million to 58.5 million people, up 180% in 28 years.
And we still have nine years remaining before Xers hit Medicare age and Xers are a generation only 6.3% smaller that Boomers.
The trend is NOT our friend on this without some reorganization of the system. Now, in and of itself this isn’t a problem. The system can be reorganized and rather easily. If we bother to do it… which we probably won’t until disaster is at the door. That means that the real Devil is the fact that “Medicare cannot go broke”… that sounds good but what it really means is that Medicare can siphon of more and more of the General Fund (i.e. add to the National Debt) to cover it’s cost. Well… until the debt becomes a problem.
Which is why, as of this writing we have some issues to deal with. Right now each and every person breathing in this country needs has the following hanging over their head: $81,152 for National Debt, $3,605 for State Debt, $6414 for Local Debt and $468,258 in Unfunded Liabilities (across the board).
That’s a total of $559,429 in government IOUs for every man, woman and child in this country. And total assets divided out over the population are $377,840 per person. Meaning we’re $181,588 per person in the hole and getting deeper every day.
And now we’re going to take a huge hit to Local, State and Federal revenues because of CoV-2 lockdowns which only makes the problem worse.
Can this be dealt with? Yup. We could be “back in the black”, kinda like AC/DC in 20 years. It’s even easier if you want to treat it like a 30 year mortgage. And really, we don’t have to do that to get out faster. A few years of “seriously addressing” these things like adults will have international investment coming in like gangbusters and speeding up the process.
But fixing this requires we admit there’s a problem and start to address it which is exactly what we are not doing and will not do as long as we keep fighting each other over petty bullshit.
Which is, of course, why the leftists are trying to make it happen. It’s been a plan for a long time now, they are just getting very close to end-game. Of course, they didn’t state it in terms of establishing a totalitarian police state:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy
Collapse the old system, people suffer and demand something be done, et viola, utopia!
One of the greatest underpants gnome schemes of all time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts
On some small levels there may be some C&P type shenanigans here but overall it’s just morons and entropy.
Those people never envisioned anything on this sort of scale. We’re not talking about collapsing the welfare state here. We’re talking about collapsing all of civilization and there’s NO way to control what happens after you pass that breakpoint.
Even the most hardcore advocates of a C&P strategy know this. And they know the theory does have it’s merits because it worked with the FCC back in the day.
C&P is meant to be a targeted strategy, not a MIRV aimed at the entire world. *They* know this. Two billion+ angry, scared and hungry people simply cannot be controlled. That’s why the CCP is hording food these days.
*its merits.
Your long post above rings true, unfortunately.
There will be big blue skies during the day and there will be the moon and stars all night. Because after that Jim Crow Gun Control democRat is through raising your taxes you won’t have a house to live in or a pot to pee in.
TRUMP/PENCE 2020.
Socialism/Communism wasn’t about improving people’s standard of living. It was all about pulling almost everyone down to the same level. Sharing poverty equally, except for the elites who were more equal than others.
In that case, Biden should get along great with the commies. He’s spent his 50 years in power doing just that. About the only part of his record that he regularly admits to is the Assault Weapons Ban.
The socialists/communists argue that wealth should be shared. You are correct that only poverty can be shared. Anyone smart enough to elevate himself above the mob is smart enough to recognize when trying to do so is an exercise in futility because the rules are stacked against him. The population is divided between those with the talent, ambition and self discipline to succeed and those lacking those attributes. Remove the opportunity to succeed and the first group will switch to behaving like the second because there is no longer any incentive for them to do better. What amazes me is that the left-wingers, most of whom are middle to upper middle class, seem not to realize this. Their lives will drop into the toilet right along with those they now oppose.
I made the same argument on this forum several years ago. At the time, a frequent commentator and critic was an expatriate Amer4ican who, I think, was living in Italy. He replied but his reply violated the terms of service badly enough for Farago to block it. I regret not asking Farago to show it to me in a private message. I suspect is was a diatribe on what he considered to be selfishness on my part. In my opinion, publishing it would have worthwhile because it would have discredited the author and his position.
Consider this: You pay $500 dollars for that new gun to defend yourself from mob rule that exists in every dem city and they offer you $100 for it, which will also increase inflation, then threaten to seize your assets when they are not turned in. Fuck democrats. Vote like your freedom depends on it. I used to vote 3rd party but not this time. I’ve seen trump follow through with enough to fill in his circle. Ya happy now, debbie? geez…
On a side note, how do all you cool kids get your avatars to have pictures here?
Well Montana…It’s not how you get there as long as you get there.
Go to gravatar.com and sign up. You’ll be able to set up and link an avatar.
It’s not just about the picture, either. It authenticates to your email address, so the trolls can’t appropriate your name (well, they could type it in, but nobody else can use it with the avatar). Very handy.
Mine showed up from my old WordPress account (which is under the Gravatar.com umbrella now) when I first posted since I used the same email address.
IMO New gun owners not counting those who just aged in will not support gun rights. They aren’t woke to the tune of the 2A they are just worried and have decided not to chance it. Their basic beliefs didn’t change.
Lots of y’all newbies reading so sound off:
Prove me wrong
Look at the Pro-Biden crowd here like enuf and Miner. When you press them on the issue they seem to believe that the gun ban talk is a bunch of hot air and nothing will change, yet somehow I guess they believe everything else the candidates say.
When my Democrat Aunt tells me that Biden isn’t going to take my guns, I point her to his platform page, and tell her that I believe he will do what he says!
Of course, she is appealed that my guns aren’t even registered as required by the National Firearms Act. Tried explaining that that’s for machine guns, suppressors, and short barreled rifles and shotguns, but she doesn’t get it.
Biden may very well make the attempt. But consider that we are about to have another Conservative Supreme Court Justice. A solid “5” to “3+1”, possible a 6 to 3 at times.
Don’t you people get it?
Nominating and confirming a new Justice before the election frees up Never Trumpers who are Pro-Second Amendment from worrying too much about Biden’s shopping list.
Rid ourselves of the current Traitor to the Republic, replace with a commonplace politician AND a solid pro-Second Amendment Supreme Court majority.
Yeah, this is doable.
“replace with a commonplace politician”
The problem with that is, people have rejected the “commonplace politicians” who have repeatedly sold out our country, exported our jobs, undercut American workers with illegals and unneeded visa holders, set up never ending regulations that hurt small business and promote monopolies, and involved us in endless wars. It’s funny how the Left is all about those “real republicans” that they spent over a decade hating on since most Never Trumpers were involved with the disastrous Bush administration.
Relax, I’m pretty sure the traitor has no chance of being elected.
Crickets from the newbie crowd just as I figured
Why would these new gun owners read this blog? Especially if they are indeed Biden voters.
Did anyone else notice how Joe Biden, in the middle photo of this article, looks strikingly similar to ventriloquist comedian Jeff Dunham’s puppet named Walter?
I’m reminded of Walter every time I see that pic.
My significant other went to High School with Jeff D.
Now thats funny right there. I don’t care who you are. Something that is not funny? The number of countries around in 1789 that are still around today without having undergone one or more changes in their type of government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_date_of_formation
Open warfare. I will not register or voluntarily surrender firearms.
The Marxists murderer between 120 and 200 million people in the Twentieth Century.
They openly talk of genocide presently.
I’m not hiding, I’m not running and I don’t own a boat.
Best comment I’ve read here.
It doesn’t have to be open warfare. The problem with being a Kamikaze is that you have only one shot. If you are more subtle, you can survive to repeat your attack. Subtle, insidious sabotage does more damage because it takes a long time to recognize, find the cause and correct it.
Don’t do your job as well as you could. Drop out of church and volunteer community groups. Keep to yourself except for your immediate family assuming you have one. Don’t make friends. If someone is in a bind, let him suffer. It’s not your problem. The idea is to sprinkle sand in society’s gears so that nothing works as well as it could.
Recognize that children are an expense rather than an asset. You don’t need any. Neither do you need a significant other whether the relationship is legally sanctioned or not. If you have no responsibility for anyone else’s welfare, they can’t be used as hostages to control you.
The political whack jobs can’t ruin the future for my children. They are safe because we never had any. That’s a huge advantage over someone who has to worry about the kind of world his children, grandchildren, etc. will have to live in. I’m 75 years old with enough health issues that I doubt I will reach eighty. They can’t hurt me after I’m gone. I do worry about my wife who is in good health and, if she is like the rest of her family, could last another twenty years.
They win if good people stop raising decent children.
Yes, at replacement rate or more. Better yet, replacement of the leftists too—shouldn’t be too difficult given their fixation on abortion.
They win unless good people raise enough good children to outnumber the trash. Short of that, the good parents are just raising more victims to be exploited. The goal of the left is to destroy a healthy society and replace it with an unhealthy one. If they succeed, which I fear is likely, the only available course of action is to do the same to their unhealthy society. Given that it’s inherently unhealthy, that shouldn’t be difficult.
I’m not a native born American. I chose to immigrate legally from an English speaking, western country with a standard of living nearly as high but not as much opportunity to better myself. I think that gives me a measure of detachment that is more difficult for the native born. I think to myself, “You Americans have a pretty good country going. Why do you persist in trying to ruin it?”
Understand that I am neither a liberal nor a conservative. I believe the private individual to be supreme. (This is not the same as so-called sovereign citizens.) From the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
These are individual rights, not social goals. The evil of the Ku Klux Klan was that they, for their own twisted reasons, destroyed the lives of decent, honorable, private individuals who happened to be black.
I believe that Christian fundamentalists and gay atheists deserve equal respect. Unless they try to impose their personal beliefs on others. Then, they should be stopped in their tracks. Stopped dead if that’s what it takes.
One of my problems with self professed liberals and conservatives is their lack of respect for private individuals who disagree with them. Both sides are all too ready to use the power of the state to impose their agenda on everyone. That makes them both evil. A Nazi is a Communist with a different agenda.
Anyone ever notice Joe looks like Jeff Dunham’s puppet “Walter”?
Vote for Basement Joe and you also get Tlaib, Omar and the rest of the Muslim insurgency. You get AOC and the rest of the communists. You get the revolutionary fringe of the Dem party. You get chaos and a civil war. You get what you deserve.
I have a friend who”a adult daughter lived in L.A. and worked in the film industry. Before this shit even got really bad she bought a J-frame Smith. She learned she had to wait 10 days. “What!?” She is no longer a tax paying citizen of CA. She took her revolver to New Mexico and is a Trump supporter today. Those idiots are killing themselves. Give ’em all the rope they want.
Old righty gun owners should consider losing their entitled attitude but at age 65 or so on average there’s not much chance of that. Vendors and their fudd lobbyists should consider being less repulsive as well, but with the gun culture being the unaccountable hick-fest it is, I hardly blame the industry.
And just who the fuck do you think you are, that I should give a shit what you think I should do? I’ve earned my own way through this life and you can kiss my ass if you don’t like the way I live.
This font is terrible. Ever word looks bolded and line spacing is too close.
Look to major news sites to see how they format.
sorry, just being honest.
I will do no such thing. I will not comply with whatever bullsh*t beto and the geriatric kid sniffing scumbag say.
The left is the enemy. They deserve nothing. Everything must be taken from them.
With Biden Our president our world will be a utopia, the rich will get richer, the poor will be wealthy, racism will stop, the lion shall lay with the lamb. No one will need a gunm, not even the country that conquer’s us.
If more people like this lady got on ballots, leftist influence would have to dwindle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBebl5fqzCA
no force police or military, foreign or domestic, can take firearms away from the American citizens… they would be crushed in a matter of weeks…The only thing they can do is stop all manufacture an existing inventories of guns and Ammunition from being sold…And we are pretty much at that point right now… and we have done that to ourselves… especially when you see A box of 9 mm hollowpoint’s for $69..It will take the ammunition makers five or 10 years to fully recover from this…
The manufacturers aren’t stopped, and product still reaches stores. There is no ammo supply issue. Factories didn’t burn down, workers aren’t quarantined, shipping continues, and raw materials are available. They are producing as much as, or more than, they ever have. It’s an unexpected temporary increase in demand. If the increase were to be permanent, it would be worthwhile to spend capital to build more production capacity. Since it’s temporary, taking debt for little future gain doesn’t make sense. The only certain expansion option is to add shifts using the existing equipment for those that aren’t already going 24/7.
“they” would be crushed immediately. NOT, one man does not an army make. We’d read or watch about the standoff, then talk about the nut case with a gunm who took on the feds. This talk of , “You want my gunms, come get them”,,, they will, they’ll get yours, get mine,get his, one enemy of the state at a time.
“””FREE KYLE”””
I’m afraid the system is going to make an example of KR.
I think the kid was justified in shooting.
He was a frigg’n idiot to be out there alone playing soldier.
Anybody here recall that “A well regulated militia…” part of it? You know that refers to training as a group, not running around unsupported with no earthly idea what in the hell you are doing there!
He defended himself but he should have been home with his momma, not pretending to be all grown up. Which he is clearly not.
The second amendment in no way says that you have to “train as a group” to bear arms or to be part of the militia. You have gone off the rails enuf and your credibility is gone. You have even taken to insulting someone who was clearly acting in the public interest against immoral and violent insurrectionists. His age doesn’t preclude him from doing the ethical thing at the right time. Shame on you. You have become twisted by hate.
What Vic said.
If Biden has the time to focus on gun law along with the nearly four dozen major campaign projects he has listed, then we will have the same old standard fight on our hands.
What we will no longer have is a treasonous pile of excrement occupying our White House.
What we will not have is 489 National Security personnel (Four start Generals, ambassadors, various high ranking military and executive branch going back from Trump’s own appointees to the Reagan era) all calling for Trump’s removal on National Security grounds.
We are at 206,000 dead from this pandemic. So what we will not have is a traitor in the White House publicly claiming it is all nothing to worry about while privately telling Bob Woodward it si a deadly killer.
What we will not have is a Vadimir Putin Rosebud Kisser ignoring even his own hand picked FBI director on Russian election interference.
What we will not have are our allies wondering what the hell side we are on once we no longer have a President who congratulates the Communist leader of China for making himself President For Life and abandons our Kurd allies who fought beside our Special Forces to be slaughtered.
It is very simple. Trump is a Traitor, Biden is just a politician.
You are going to be very unhappy in Nov, if it gets too bad, just remember I am laughing at you!
Biden voters with guns is a serious concern. You have mentally challenged people owning new guns and likely no training. A recipe for disaster. Biden is our enemy.
Biden is merely a politican, nothign we have not had to deal with before.
Trump is a Domestic Enemy of The Republic and the treasonous supporter of our Foreign enemies..
Easy choice.
I think we all realize that it is you who is the enemy of the republic. What a loser.
If the President is not re-elected the 42 % gain the DOW has made during his term in office will soon be lost.
The Stock Market will continue to lose value causing a depression. Our economy is based on consumer spending and credit. National Debt is $25 Trillion. Out GNP is $77 trillion. The average family owes $6,000.00
in credit card debt. We are doing great right now under Trump’s leadership. We change that at our demise.
Comments are closed.