"At the callow age of 10, it was clear the whole world was bound for better things, and your author meant to keep up with it.
But, more than 45 winters later, when we tune in to find out what has happened, things look a tad different. We look first at our national leaders. Washington, recall, was one of the richest men of his generation, as well as an accomplished military hero. Adams was no slouch as a thinker and statesman. And Jefferson? He was a genius: a scientist, a great architect, a philosopher and an inventor. He designed a new plow, a coding system and even a macaroni machine. And these three people were selected out of a tiny population of just 2.5 million people.
We hold our breath and imagine what kind of Newtons, Pericles and Catos would be thrown up, after more than 200 years of improvement, in a society of nearly 300 million! And then, we turn to Washington...and throw up!
What has gone wrong? We look in the White House; we look down both sides of the aisle in Congress and under the seats. What do we see? We see neither a Washington nor a Jefferson. We see not a speck of Adams. Instead, it is a collection of hacks, “has-beens,” “never-wases,” and puffed-up no-accounts. Then, there is Hillary Clinton!"
Don't worry, my American friends. It is the same way in Canada. The entire Daily Reckoning article is worth reading.
Reconing truly is superb. I do wonder sometimes about all this doom-and-gloomery economically. I know there'll be another "recession" inevitably coinciding with the 7-year business-cycle downturn, but the fiat currency system is pretty much equivalent to how the government diluted money in the past by simply making the silver/gold coins smaller, or cutting with base metals. Nothing new under the sun.
ReplyDeleteHow much of this doomsday stuff is real, and how much is media fear-mongering?
I wonder...
No-one really knows exactly how the future will unfold and the sanest way to make it through life is to hedge your bets. I would like nothing better than for my life to go on much as it is, economically speaking, but I would be a fool not to consider alternative possibilities. Empires come and go, governments can't help but become more and more icompetent and the electorate never tire of the government teat. My opinion is that if you at least consider that worst case scenarios are possible, you will be less likely to be caught with your pants down when TSHTF.
ReplyDelete