Maggie's Farm

Victor Davis Hanson has a thoroughly depressing column at PJ media. The gist of it is that our country is at a historical crossroads, and we have chosen the proverbial road to ruin.

He writes:

"The fourth-century Greeks at the end pasted silver over their worthless bronze coins — “reds” being the protruding noses and hair of the portraiture that first appeared bronze-like, as the silver patina rubbed off. The bastardization of the currency fostered many books on Roman decline. More worthless money for more people was a sign of “crisis” — analogous to our own quantitative easing and $17 trillion in debt.

Every three working Americans provide sustenance for two who are not ill, enfeebled, or too young.

A shrinking percentage of our population feeds us, finds our energy, protects us, and builds things we count on. They get up each morning to do these things, in part in quest for the good life, in part out of a sense of social obligation and basic humanity, in part because they know they will die if idle and thrive only when busy, and in part simply because “they like it.”

We can stack the deck against them with ever higher taxes, ever more regulations, ever more obligations to others, and they may well continue. But not if we also damn them as the “1%” and call them the agents of inequality and the fat cats who did not build what they built or who profited when they should not have."

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/thin-strand-of-civilization/?singlepage=true

feeb again:

One wonders how long it will be until we return to the historical norm of poverty, in this country? A country of a very few very rich with the rest being very poor looks to be inevitable due to the economic policies we are pursuing.

How sad and tragic that we are simply throwing our prosperity away.

re the video:

Unless I missed it, he never makes the point that the gumballs that come to America improve THEIR lives, even if the effect on global poverty is negligible, and the effect on the USA is a negative.