Beppe Grillo's Blog

The United States, the most indebted country, Is responsible for 50% of the world's military spending. An enormous amount. Russia, the historical antagonist, is spending 3.5%. The United States is transforming the debt into weapons. So basically anyone buying United States stocks is financing the war in Afghanistan and the military bases of Dal Molin of Vicenza and of Okinawa where they have been settled in for 65 years. The Roman Empire collapsed under the attack of the barbarians at its borders. Its legions withdrew from the Rhine and from Britain. Perhaps the United States will follow the same idea because of the economic impossibility of keeping 716 military bases in 40 countries.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

Wars sending U.S. into ruin | Eric Margolis | Columnists | Comment | Toronto Sun

More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying tanks.

Washington's deficit (the difference between spending and income from taxes) will reach a vertiginous $1.6 trillion US this year. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and Japan, to which the U.S. already owes $1.5 trillion. Debt service will cost $250 billion.

To spend $1 trillion, one would have had to start spending $1 million daily soon after Rome was founded and continue for 2,738 years until today.

Obama's total military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes Pentagon spending of $880 billion. Add secret black programs (about $70 billion); military aid to foreign nations like Egypt, Israel and Pakistan; 225,000 military "contractors" (mercenaries and workers); and veterans' costs. Add $75 billion (nearly four times Canada's total defence budget) for 16 intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees.

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far), will cost $200-250 billion more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama's Afghan "surge" of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion -- more than Germany's total defence budget.

they bought tanks, we bought banks!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

Over fifty years, yes, certainly. The US has not been under anywhere near the stress that it faces in the next half century under the most optimistic of scenarios. An oil-independent transcontinental transport system could well prevent it, but there's no guarantee that the vested private interests of the Oil industry can be overcome to make it happen before the US is in too severe economic distress to allow the project to be started.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

Do you really think this is a serious possibility? From the outside, the US looks very much like a coherent polity with not nearly enough potential fracture lines (and too few of them coinciding geographically) for dissolution to be a realistic option.

It is not just a serious possibility - I think it is highly likely. The 50-year timespan that Bruce mentions above is what I've always felt we could expect for this to unfold.

The US is anything but a coherent polity. We have numerous fracture lines, many of which are starting to show up in geographical self-sorting. The economic base and social, cultural, and ideological values of different regions is becoming more pronounced, not less. Those seem to be basic building blocks of the eventual dissolution of the USA.

Let me use California as an example. From the American conquest in 1846 to sometime in the late 20th century, California needed federal spending and projects to prosper. The feds built our interstates, some of our ports (including LA), and enabled prosperity through beneficial fiscal and monetary policies.

Now that is all changing. California is a donor state - we get 0.78 cents back in spending for every dollar in taxes we send to Washington DC. Meanwhile the Feds run deeply harmful economic policies that worsen our situation while benefiting a different base in other states. California lacks the monetary tools of a state with a sovereign currency.

And as the feds start scaling back their expenditures, in the service of a right-wing agenda this state has repeatedly rejected, CA is going to go it alone in building projectsand supporting R&D that the feds used to fund themselves. We will likely have to fund our high speed rail system ourselves (including finding private funding) since it looks unlikely that we'll get more than the $3 billion we've already received from the Feds. In short, CA is going to discover very soon that we don't need the federal government for very much, and that we are instead being hindered by them as they treat CA more and more like a colony.

That's not to paint us as innocent victims. Prop 13, state-sanctioned sprawl, and government paralysis in Sacramento are of our own doing. And the factors described above aren't sufficient to convince people here it's time to go our own way.

But that will change. For the first time since the conquest, a majority of Californians are now native to this state. And their values are increasingly divergent from the extremist agenda being pursued by the right and backed by residents of other states. That creates the conditions that could eventually lead us to strike out on our own.

This is reminiscent of the situation in the 13 colonies in the 1760s. As the colonies became populated by those born there, or by those who were not originally British subjects, a new identity as "American" emerged. That was necessary for the Revolution to occur.

But it wasn't sufficient. It took a political crisis that brought home the problems of rule from London to show the colonists that independence was desirable. And even then it happened late in the crisis - the colonies had been at war with Parliament for a year when the Declaration of Independence was passed.

States like California, Oregon, and Washington will eventually go their own way, whether gradually as with Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, or suddenly, as with the American Revolution. We might also see some kind of fundamental reorganization of the US itself, returning to the loose union under the Articles of Confederation, which resembled the European Community. After all, the primary reason the Constitution was written in 1787 was to force a monetary union of the 13 states. One ironic consequence of the right's attacks on federal fiscal and monetary policy is it could lay the groundwork for this sort of thing to happen.

And the world will live as one

Fifty years is far to long a time frame for me to be able to rationally even play at guessing what could happen.  But over the next twenty years the only way I could see a break up is a combination of a complete lockout of the Republican party from national power and a dominant, more left wing Democratic party.  If 14 years from now the Repubs have just lost their fifth presidential election in a row, we have full single payer health care, numerous measures to sharply decrease inequality, a strong secular ethos, and a Dem party base that remains built on non-Christian whites and minorities, then I just could see it. And I'm certain there would be plenty of talk about it. Otherwise, no way. Mass civil unrest sucks for the economic elites in the short run, and by sucks I mean large scale total bankruptcies and individual members getting killed.  Personal self interest isn't everything, which is why it is possible, and the right wing of the elites has a more deeply felt ideological cast than the centrist part. It would also be the kind of situation where substantial parts of the military would be unwilling to move against separatists, and small numbers would be actively willing to join them.  I'm also pretty sure that Texas would not be part of the Red States of America - if non whites are politically split, the scenario doesn't exist, if they aren't, a two thirds non-white state isn't joining them.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

I don't have as sanguine a view that neoliberal globalization policies have had a net positive effect on food production in Africa. On balance, globalization causes more harm than good to the food security of the developing nations I am most familiar with, and the loss of globalization would be more akin to the loss of a plague of locusts.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

santiago:

But I think we also have to ask whether although there are plenty of bad things about the American Empire, does that really add up to a reason to seek its undoing without first building the foundations for a better way of organizing the world?

I do not see that we have the power to undo the American Empire or organise an alternative. So I do not see the relevance.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

santiago:

 The implication is that if you dismantle the institutions, you also might destroy the human relationships that the institutions allowed to prosper with possibly catastrophic consequences.

TBTF?

i get the implication alright, it's the old blackmail by inferred-threat-of-force-by-withdrawal-of-essential-services, so big players can cheat on the rules that keep the game fair(er).

'you' destroy? no payoff for the middle class to impoverish itself!

'we' didn't hollow out the global economy with war and casino capitalism, 'they', those who most benefited from the game, shat all over it, planted explosives deep in its bowels, secretly, camouflaging their sick predations with thick layers of impenetrable jargon-rich bullshit, while they flounced into galactically absurd levels of personal and corporate wealth capture, all the while bending liberal democracies into ugly, threatening shapes, by purchasing politicians like used cars.

the world would merrily let itself be governed by responsible 'deciders'... most people would love to turn over the keys to their happiness and social equilibrium to accountable, transparent, honourable governments, and just get on with their lives, but what if those deemed trustworthy enough to be given such excessive power to fracture societies with punishing cuts, (then gallivant off to well paid pastures, far away from the scenes of their crimes, or collect in secret G-20 type connivings), those whose most sacred duty is to maintain a fiduciary, maintenance role in the very architectural foundations societies are based on, can suck whole sovereign nation/states lifeblood dry for breakfast?

these clowns are flying too damn close to the sun, and we all know how that ends!

and guess who's getting splattered with burning wax and feathers?

they break it, from the inside, and then the shafted are supposed to be too fearful to contemplate living without these planetary eco-gobbling, totalitarian-minded goons and their mentally disturbed juggling of the family jewels.

money used to symbolise intelligence and sweat, now the cart is before the horse and it has become pure vapourware...

yes there will be a terrible price to pay for such hubris, with much loss of quantity and quality of life, but what role in creating this unholy clusterfuck did the common man play? how long is everyman supposed to weep for the dissolution of one form of semi-controlled chaos, when it's screwing him six ways from sunday, even if the alternative is more chaotic, for as long as it takes for people to tire of strife, and relearn to coalesce around verifiable realities, ones they can touch and feel, instead of virtual castles in the air, that crumble every time the winds of cyclic change blow?

those who couldn't see through the tissue of lies, and trusted those who coaxed and cajoled them into denial and the cognitively challenged, sheeplike support for imperial violence and resource plunder, have the most to lose.

some of the rest of us have been watching evil defying gravity blowback for decades, and there is a ghastly sense of the other shoe finally dropping. of course there will be goodies to give up, anyone thinking the firstworld vision of the future of happy motoring and sprawling suburbia, trashy media, junk food, braindead ed, groaning hypermalls and cheez whiz snack diets, and a pill or three for all that ails ya (as you contemplate the horror of the inevitable) is going to last much longer has more faith in the lies than i do... this whole model of western(TM) life has become heartless, even as millions of new acolytes assemble to quaff the shiny koolaide.

my bet is that the novelty of events changing globally, added to the excitement of seeing rotten old edifices crumbling, and the space they will make for new and wiser constructions, will more than compensate for the sacrifices we will have to make for exchanging the present rot-riddled paradigm for something more...evolved, even if it is painful. show me any birth that isn't!

they had their fun, at the poorest and weakest's expense, for centuries, they think they can have their cake and eat it for ever. we of the future can carry over the best of what we designed, before it was corroded by people of bad faith, or no faith at all.

so it goes went...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty