Obamamania Or Obama Mayhem?
May 9, 2012 by John Myers
With his reelection bid just months away President Barack Obama is painting himself as a reformer who will continue to resurrect America. Below is an excerpt from an ad released last week: (WARNING, do not watch if you have bouts of common sense or are subject to episodes of depression while seeing your country go down the drain).
“On the day Barack Obama took office, America had already lost 4.4 million jobs — an economic disaster, the worst in a generation. Some said America’s best days were behind us. And like America, he (Obama) dug deep, fought back and never lost faith in our ability to meet the challenge.”
Obama’s Plan
Obama tells us that the Republican Party is the challenge because it is mired in the past. If by the past Obama means America’s wealth and greatness, then he is correct. And make no mistake, if the President is given another four years to work out his schemes and his plans, America’s greatness will be lost and a staggering superpower will be eviscerated.
It is true that the United States was in decline before Obama’s election in 2008. However, the President has managed to cut out America’s economic underpinnings and in doing that he has severely wounded the Nation’s psyche.
One hundred years ago the U.S. was quickly consolidating its position as the richest and most powerful nation. Today it is the world’s largest debtor, and well past its economic apex.
Denial is in full bloom. Obama is commanding the largest U.S. military to wage a war that cannot be won. At the same time, the President continues to spend billions in new tax dollars on unproven clean energy.
How much longer can we support this military monster? What happens when the money flow stops?
History serves up grim answers to these disturbing questions. Rome collapsed after it became overextended and could no longer afford to pay its legions to impose Caesar’s will. Spain collapsed after its vast overseas commitments broke its treasury. And England succumbed when its treasury could no longer finance its ambitions.
To say that this cannot happen to America is to ignore history. Where we are headed is a natural consequence of where we have been.
The United States is falling victim to what historian Paul Kennedy calls “imperial overstretch.” In his bestseller, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Kennedy wrote:
If a state overextends itself strategically by the conquest of extensive territories or the waging of costly wars — it runs the risk that the potential benefits from external expansion may be outweighed by the great expense of it all. This dilemma becomes acute if the nation concerned has entered a period of relative economic decline.
President Obama proclaims that the U.S. is a great power, able to force its will on the world, without regard of the cost. He has perpetuated the illusion. If you listen to the President, you would think that the United States is as much of a superpower today as it was 50 years ago.
By any measure America is in decline:
- In the 1950s and 1960s U.S. productivity grew by around 3 percent per year. That meant that our standard of living doubled every 24 years. Today, productivity is growing by less than 1 percent. That means it takes 60 to 70 years for our living standard to double.
- In 1970 U.S. firms manufactured 100 percent of the electronic products bought in the United States. Today they account for less than 4 percent.
- In 1981 the U.S. was the world’s largest creditor with the rest of the world owing it $140 billion. Today our aggregate debt exceeds $14 trillion, up $5 trillion since Mr. Obama took office.
- Unemployment typically did not rise above 7 percent a generation ago but is now locked in at more than 8 percent; this during Mr. Obama’s so called economic recovery.
- Medicare and Social Security will soon be insolvent at the current rates of disbursement.
- U.S. manufacturing jobs surged from the end of the Depression until the early 1970s, when the number of jobs peaked. Then jobs were flat until 1999. After that jobs collapsed. For the 10 years ending in 2010, factories lost workers so fast that they erased all the gains that had been made over the previous 70 years, with the loss of one out of every three manufacturing jobs; some 6 million in total. (See chart below):
America’s joblessness is endemic, especially when you consider the trillions of new dollars injected by the Obama Administration.
Clyde Prestowitz, a former U.S. Commerce Official noted, “The American Century is over.”
And The Atlantic recently pointed out that Obama will have a difficult time making good on campaign promises:
For most of U.S. history, most people had a slow and steady wind at their back, a combination of economic forces that didn’t make life easy but gave many of us little pushes forward that allowed us to earn a bit more every year. Over a lifetime, it all added up to a better sort of life than the one we were born into. That wind seems to be dying for a lot of Americans. What the country will be like without it is not quite clear.
I think we can infer the result of Obama’s dismantling of Pax Americana. It will mean a continued economic and moral decline of the United States. The first evidence of unrest occurred last year with Occupy protests in the United States. Unless there is a turnaround in the economy we will see worsening violence and social discord.
We may have one desperate last chance to save the American dream. It rests in the hands of voters who have the responsibility to see that Obama is defeated in November.
Yours in good times and bad,
John Myers
Editor, Myers’ Energy & Gold Report
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