Today’s news is about our Congress heroically shoveling out taxpayer dollars to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, plus another $4 billion to states so that they can hand out dollars to their favorite local banks and builders. Perhaps it is a good time to review our society’s major investments since 1980…
early 1980s: massive spending on military hardware and personnel
late 1980s: savings and loan bailout (wikipedia), a very similar situation to Fannie/Freddie in which S&L executives were able to pocket gains from risky investments, but stick taxpayers with any losses (of which there were at least $125 billion picked up by taxpayers, at a time when $125 billion was real money and would have bought a lot of oil, gold, etc.); much of the S&L money had gone out to finance commercial real estate development
1990s: inflating the dot.com bubble, making investment bankers and venture capitalists rich but leaving a landscape of wiped-out ordinary investors and very few sustained jobs
early 2000s: inflating the real estate bubble, (post 9/11) hiring half of working-age Americans to frisk, X-ray, and screen the other half of Americans due to terrorism fears
late 2000s: building infrastructure for Iraqis, bailing out anyone who got into the real estate bubble too late
It is amazing that the economy has survived so much investment into areas that cannot possibly produce long-term jobs and growth.
The massive US homeland security apparatus is definitely a massive waste of money and it makes the US unwelcoming to foreign tourists who should be welcomed with open arms in these challenging economic times.
I reside outside of the US and the thought of being frisked by uneducated American security bureaucrats who have the power to dispatch anybody to the dog cages of Guantanamo on a technicality is a definite putoff to visiting the US and spending cash there.
The US should fire 90% of the military and homeland security apparatus and invest the savings instead in education, research,healthcare and pensions.
The idiotic government propaganda about AL CIAeda wanting to take away the “freedom” of Americans is laughable ; the US faces no external threats – if the country were ever attacked by an outside army they would not stand a chance given the private weapon arsenals in almost every American home.