Not sure how I’ll do the “work” part, but I’ll try

I see the future and it is everything sci-fi could dream of.

We got fat on big salaries and middle class welfare and cheap housing, cars, energy and college degrees and super-low taxes while we crammed our products down the throat of the rest of the world. And we consumed our natural resources and our wealth doing it. Eventually, we couldn’t afford it, so we sent our wives to work and we developed cheap credit for the masses (hey! that was more profitable than actually making stuff), and we never noticed that, after correcting for inflation, we were still poorer every year. With the wife working and credit cards, we actually thought we were better off. Then one day we woke up in debt.

The jobs are never coming back. Obama can’t create them by stimulus spending, and business is not going to invest their tax cuts in creating them either. In fact, Our problem now is too many people. We just need Mexicans to do the dirty work, and Asians to do the science and engineering, while the rest of us scramble and cut each other’s throats for all those office jobs we thought we were going to get but that we now know were just masturbation.

The Republicans think if unions, regulation and taxes were to disappear, it would be 1955 all over again. The Democrats still think we can borrow our way into the Jetsons’ plastic paradise.

I’ve seen the future, and it does not work.

The economy has been in shambles since the Nixon administration, and everyone will quickly try to say otherwise; that the economy did great under the leaders of the 80′s, 90′s and 2000′s. I dunno, maybe they’ve seceded to the state of denial.

We DO have our fingers in a lot of pies, which has taught me to never trust anything a politician tries to sell you to land a seat in office (ANY office).

Politicians, company execs, and most people in power in general, demand more money which usually comes from the money paid to the little people lower ones in the chain of command. This usually doesn’t balance out in the checkbooks, so if they feel they can’t cheat the taxes they get breaks on already, they cut the amount from the peon’s salary and any projects they feel are unnecessary compared to their growing annual rate of salary increase.

The US may seem weak, but it still holds a lot of hegemonic power, in which it’s activities result in nothing more than state-sponsored terrorism. Using it’s cultural and buying status (Do what we want or we won’t buy crap from you or outsource jobs to you!), they can have their way with a lot of nations. The sad thing? 5%. If the other nations on the planet stood together and collectively put their foot down, our superpower status would be gone like that *snaps fingers*. Then again, it’s like that for a lot of other nations across the planet too.

1# rule of history I’ve learned: never mess with the Afghans on their own turf. They own everyone EVERY TIME. Best to take a peaceful approach. Also? The western world put Africa in the situation it is now. I hardly see those governments in a position to complain about how detrimental the current state of things there is to their interests.

The whole debt thing just seems silly. We base our entire economy (as do other nations) on worthless scraps of paper backed by nothing, with only the assurance that others will see value in it giving it any worth. It most likely wouldn’t work on a large scale, but I’ve always favored the Barter system. Also, I don’t see why we can’t forgive some debts, or pass legislation that requires the budget to be balanced, let alone legislation cutting the pay of congressmen.

As for the robots, I hear ya. I remember when I was young, I’d go to the library every weekend and take my books to the check-out counter, and a friendly face would greet me every time. IF I needed help finding anything in the library, they would point me in the right direction. Hell, sometimes we’d even discuss books. Then one day (also when young), I went there, and found my favorite librarians replaced by a monolithic computer. I had no idea how to use the thing, and stood there for 25 minutes before going to the help desk, which was blocked by a long line of similarly confused people. After a while, I got used to it, seeing as I could still ask the remaining librarians for help on where to find books – until they were replaced by another machine. This one could show me all the books in the library system -but it couldn’t give recommendations, it couldn’t give feedback on the books I chose. Many times, all it did was either present many unfamiliar books, or show interesting books that were always tantalisingly out of reach. Combined with the increasingly crappy care the books began to get over the years (no more money for new books, no more money to replace old ones), I eventually just stopped going to the libraries.

The internet – undoubtedly one of man’s greatest creations. Like many of it’s other creations, however, it is heavily misused. Many groups do it for many purposes, and none of them are justified. I find it hard to understand the logic companies and governments use to justify charging you for protection – it seems like a giant mob racket if you ask me.

And yes, it IS reminiscent of Rome – however, I think it’s more like Rapa Nui in this case.

My only hope is that this comes after I’ve passed on. I have absolutely no desire to live in a world where you have to fight for food and all that’s left is to go back to very basic living conditions or sit and wait for death to catch up with the millions who will starve to death, the strong taking from the weak to survive, survival going to the strongest but not the worthiest.

The movie version could be called, “Starting Over.”

Appealing to the lowest common denominator in our society is a big factor as well. Look who makes up an increasing large percentage of the government workforce, and you can esily see where the inefficiency is coming from. Intelligence testing for government positions has been eliminated in favor of political vote buying.