1789

An economy is founded on the efficient production of three things:

1. Stuff that is mined.
2. Stuff that is grown.
3. Stuff that is manufactured.

Everybody should have the chance to have a small business and run interference against the system. It has become very difficult and expensive to actually do things here. The aircraft carrier that cost around a billion dollars thirty years ago, now costs over five billion. Half of that rise is inflation, the other half is dumb government mandates. Slow, steady, and never ending.

The rational free market responds by outsourcing production and importing workers who do not enjoy the workplace protections of Citizens. The guys at the top make higher margins, the middle is squeezed, the low are on the government tit anyway so they don’t care, and the illegals love the $20k/yr/household that they get in freebies. Back home the per capita GDP is a fifth of that.

All well and good, but financially unsustainable. Imports lower the value of the dollar, making it more expensive to borrow the money we’re addicted to. Foreign oil makes it worse. The housing fraud has the Fed running liquid-cooled printing presses to keep the banks stable. Eventually the credit rating will go away and the checks will stop showing up for the dependent.

And the Second American Republic will emerge, whatever it ends up looking like. I’m rooting for something like the Founding Fathers came up with back in 1789.