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Oct. 30, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
18:21
3115 What Pisses Me Off About Government Debt | The Debt Ceiling and Budget Act
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Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Not safe for work.
So Paul Ryan became the 54th Speaker of the U.S. House on Thursday.
Ryan swearing in came almost exactly a month after John Boner revealed his plans to resign from Congress at the end of October.
Boner's position as Speaker of the House as being threatened via a floor vote as conservatives were enraged that he refused to use the upcoming reality of the federal government reaching the debt ceiling limit as political leverage to fight for the defunding of Planned Parenthood.
John Boner's parting gift...
To Ryan was, quote, The bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, this deal, was revealed Monday night after secretive negotiations among congressional leaders and the White House.
The legislation would result in at least $85 billion in spending increases over the first three fiscal years, Most importantly, this act would suspend the current $18.1 trillion debt limit through March 15, 2017.
Because March 14 would have been a cave-in.
Now, of course, Obama's term ends on January 20, 2017, so the next president will have 54 days until the debt limit expires.
The suspension of the debt ceiling means that lawmakers are effectively forfeiting their constitutional power to control the borrowing, and thus the spending, and thus the totalitarianism of the federal government.
Hey, founding fathers, you wanted checks and balances?
Well, too damn bad!
We've got some votes to buy!
The current level of debt...
It's almost $57,000 per U.S. citizen.
And it is over 104% of GDP. All right.
I know these numbers fly around, they fly around, but just take a moment.
Just think about this.
It's over 104%.
Of GDP. See, there's the deficit, right?
What you spent but can't pay for this year.
There's the deficit, which is the accumulation of that over time.
And then there are the unfunded liabilities, which are the promises you've made to people in the future that you have no money to pay.
So we're just talking about the debt.
The debt is more than 100% of the entire economic output of the United States in any given year.
And of course, remember, in the gross domestic product, they count things like prisons and cancer treatments and other crazy things.
It's really important.
Mull this over.
This is slavery.
When you were a slave from the antebellum South in the 19th century, you actually got to keep 80 or so, maybe even 90% of your labor value.
You either got it directly or in kind, sort of food, shelter, health care, and so on.
80-90% of your labor was consumed by you in slavery.
Now we have 100% of the entire economic output in debt.
You understand?
You have been sold to bankers.
You are indistinguishable from a slave.
Debt is a form of slavery.
And it has taken 150 years For the United States to wage a war that killed 600,000 people with the goal of ending slavery, to return to slavery.
The fact that you get to choose your own job is not the fundamental aspect of slavery.
The greed of the voters.
If you vote for more and more and more, your greed has wrapped soft chains around the necks and legs of your children.
I mean, I gotta ask...
This is not just to Americans.
This is to everyone around the world where your country is spiraling into the debt black hole of foreign banks for ownership.
Do you care?
Do you care?
What happened to us actually caring about the future of our children?
Have we completely given up on that?
Do we assume they're going to be abducted by space aliens who are treating them as if they were somehow handed to us in test tubes and we have nothing to do with them?
Do we care?
This is the deal.
This is the intergenerational deal.
Your forefathers fought and bled and died for your freedoms.
And you have one job and one job only.
And that is to take those freedoms, hopefully enhance them, but at least don't degrade them and pass them along to your children.
You know, people say, oh, we don't inherit the environment from our ancestors.
We borrow it from our children.
Well, don't you understand?
If we don't have economic freedom, we don't have freedom.
A lack of economic freedom is slavery.
There's no other fundamental definition.
Have we given up caring about the future?
Have we given up caring about our children?
Have we lost our hearts as well as our minds?
We have one job in this world.
And right now, it's not even that difficult a job, at least compared to times past.
We must preserve and extend our liberties.
In the past, you had to write and pass around samistats and hope that the rulers did not catch you and throw you in a gulag or burn you in a funeral pyre or lock you in a dungeon or exile you to Siberia.
Now...
The protection and extension of freedom, which is the protection and extension of reason and evidence, has never been easier.
In the past you had to scrawl in the dark and pass under covers and hope that you wouldn't get caught.
The hobnailed boots at four o'clock in the morning kicking in your doors.
But now you can whisper and the world can hear everywhere forever.
Now you don't need a newspaper.
You don't need a television station.
You don't need to be pretty.
You don't need makeup.
Hell, you don't even need great hair.
All you need is a mic, the truth, and the will to speak it.
We have no excuses left in the passionate defense of all the liberties that make life worth living for anyone with half a brain.
This betrayal Of people who are desperate to regain some lost liberties is the fundamental reason behind Donald Trump, but people don't understand this as a whole.
Donald Trump is small government advocates murder weapon against the Republican Party.
He is not an alternative.
He is the enemy of all that is established, at least in the eyes of those who wish to regain some freedoms.
Here's the wrecking ball used to bring down the false cathedral of lies known as the GOP. The Medicare prescription drug legislation, passed in 2003, signed by Bush, added $22 trillion to the unfunded liabilities of the United States.
That's not exactly Jeffersonian small government!
Interest on the debt alone in America is over $526 billion per year, or $16,692 per second.
That's like achieving the escape velocity from reality.
Now, by not limiting debt accumulation by any kind of specific amount...
Politicians avoid any existing budget cuts which might be frowned upon by their well-bribed constituents.
This estimate is that the debt limit waiver through March 15, 2017 will increase the debt limit by about $1.5 trillion to a new level of $19.6 trillion.
So according to the Congressional Budget Office, if the government remains on its current planned course, it will spend $7 trillion more over the next 10 years than it will receive in taxes, piling on even more debt.
And that's assuming that the current tax levels remain the same, or that tax receipts remain the same.
The United States is borrowing about a million dollars Every minute of every day.
Now you understand, without the strenuous intellectual intervention of the people, this will not stop until the society tears itself apart.
This will not stop.
There's cannibals, there's you in a pot, they're putting on the fire, they're not going to stop unless you get out.
See, political power, this is not an analogy, this is a direct medical fact.
Political power is a physical addiction.
Power over others rewards you with endorphins.
It becomes a physical addiction and you get depressed if you don't have it.
Expecting some stockbroker coke addict to end his binge when he's on a high is unrealistic, to say the least.
If you ever want to know what it's like prying the government away from its increasing powers, just try prying alcohol out of the hand of a shaky alcoholic.
It's not going to work.
Now, the fact that it's a bipartisan agreement to leave your children penniless and in the debt chains of foreign banksters, see, that should be a warning sign.
When both political parties agree...
Well, this is when it's time to bend over, grab your shoelaces, and pretend you're not in prison.
Now, the House of Representatives voted 266 to 167 Wednesday for the deal that raises this debt ceiling through 2017.
167 Republicans voted against the deal, but 79 joined with the Democrats to push the legislation through the lower chamber.
The budget deal has moved to the Senate where it passed, despite being filibustered by Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul and strongly opposed by Senator Ted Cruz.
So, what would happen if the debt ceiling wasn't increased?
Well, the federal government would be forced to have a balanced budget, only being able to spend what comes in.
Apparently, this has become anathema to the ruling classes.
Professor Lawrence Kotlikoff of Boston University has used Congressional Budget Office reports to calculate the fiscal gap or total unfunded liabilities.
The difference between the government's projected financial obligations, what it's promised to people, and the present value of all projected future revenues.
The United States' credit card bill.
The total unfunded liabilities were a whopping $210 trillion in 2014.
That's trillion.
That is more than $654,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States.
Or a little under $2 million per household.
And it's not like all those households are working or not working for the government.
Now that...
$210 trillion went up from $205 trillion the previous year.
So the true deficit the previous year was $5 trillion.
It's a third of the entire national income in a deficit in one year.
Now, if you want to eliminate this gap, well, you're going to have to have an immediate permanent 59% increase in federal tax revenue or an immediate permanent 38% cut in federal spending.
Now, I have a graduate degree in history, so I know a little bit whereof I speak when I talk about debt as the soft slayer of civilization.
You look at the late Roman Empire.
The late Roman Empire decided to buy votes rather than be good, decided to hire mercenaries rather than impress its own people, had to raise taxes in order to pay the mercenaries from a steadily declining tax base when they couldn't pay their mercenaries.
They went to Rome and sacked it, dropping Rome's population from over a million to 17,000 in a matter of months.
The depopulation of civilization, the scattering of formerly civilized traders, to scrubbing out self-sufficient, hardscrabble farmers can happen in a matter of a few months or a year or two.
Germany's Weimar Republic was heavily indebted By the Versailles Peace Treaty at the end of the First World War.
And they couldn't pay their debts, so they started printing money, created hyperinflation, destroyed the middle class, created a power vacuum wherein marched one mustachioed Australian with a former pension for painting pictures.
French Revolution, hyperinflation that followed.
Dying systems take down hundreds of millions of lives.
And it's not actually that hard to solve.
To oppose the inevitable froggy death march to the endless penal colonies of debt slavery is fairly easy.
All you have to do is tell the truth.
And apparently, truth has become an environmental toxin for the voting public of the Western world.
Because we know we need to change.
We know we need to change.
And we know we can do it.
We are resilient as a species.
We are the most adaptable and most resilient and most resourceful species the universe has ever seen, at least to our knowledge.
But we've kind of forgotten all about our resilience because we've been well paid to plead our weakness and our inability to make good decisions and our helplessness and our bad backs.
We have been well paid for our spines and now we think we cannot stand.
We as a species have survived wars, both local, continent-wide and worldwide.
We have survived ice ages.
We have survived endless waves of plagues.
We have survived famines.
We can adapt, survive, and in fact flourish without our little government checks that are written on the bones and freedoms and lives of our children.
There's two things we need to do.
Make babies.
Guard freedom.
And these two are closely related.
If we don't have children, the selfish and inconsequential pleasures of the moment become our addictions.
There's nothing to build for in the future.
None of those we love will survive much beyond our lifespan.
And so, what the rulers want to do in order to break the will of the people...
Is to convince the people not to have children.
And you can see, of course, that Western countries as a whole are below replacement rates of fertility.
And no civilization has ever regained replacement fertility after dipping below replacement fertility.
That doesn't mean we can't change it.
It means we need to actually know the issues.
So if they can get you to stop having kids, they can get you to stop caring about freedom.
But there are enough children Particularly in America, that it is time to gird our loins and speak the truth.
The people who portray themselves as weak in order to pick the pockets of taxpayers are not weak.
They are not weak.
And reminding people that they do not need to break themselves in order to get the drip, drip, drip of steady imaginary money from the groaning tables of the masters, that is not a life fit for free human beings.
To the leaders, just tell the truth.
Just tell the truth.
People can take it.
People can handle it.
Say, oh, well, you know, if we cut government spending, what's going to happen to single moms?
They'll find someone.
They'll find someone.
Lots of single moms after World War I, when 10 million European men died in the trenches, they adapted, they figured it out, they got it done.
There's two things we need to do.
Make babies, guard freedom.
If you don't make babies, at least join me on the ramparts guarding freedom.
If you do make babies, look into their eyes.
It's not their fault.
The pain that we have now, or the literal death that we have later, because these kinds of escalations and spiraling of debt, result in wars.
Either you go and invade foreign countries or, as is happening in the European Union now, and to some degree in America, you allow foreign cultures to invade you, creating a huge amount of social dislocation and conflict, which then distracts people and provides an excuse for the governments to cut their spending.
We can avoid all of this.
We do not need to be on the blind, photocopy, repetition, blood-soaked turntable of history.
We can change it.
Tell the truth.
It's unsustainable.
It's immoral.
It's destructive.
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