What do YOU think is the biggest threat to America?

Question

What do you think is the biggest threat to our country? PLEASE think before you answer! I would really like to avoid getting a dozen answers saying "George Bush" and another dozen answers saying "liberals". Please think about it and THEN answer if you would please. Thanks!

MY OPINION: Socialism. I think socialism is the biggest threat to our country. More than terrorists, more than rogue nations, and more than Communist China or North Korea, I think the biggest threat to our country is coming from within. Americans seem all to willing to pay higher taxes in exchange for more benefits (social security, medicare, medicade, welfare, unemployment, and now universal health coverage). What's next? Higher taxes in exchange for free food? Free housing? When will it end??? 100 years ago this country had the largest middle class, no national debt, we weren't world police, and there were over 45 taxes that we pay today that we didn't pay back then. What the hail happened???

Answer 1

America hating Liberals (Socialists). I see a lot of them yelling for peace but I have not heard of a plan for
peace. So, if we follow their plan for America, think about this:

1) The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in their affairs, past & present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo, Noriega, Milosevic, Hussein, and the rest of those "good 'ole' boys", we will never "interfere" again.

2) We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with Germany, South Korea, the Middle East, and the Philippines. They don't want us there.. We would station troops at our borders. No one allowed sneaking through holes in the fence.

3) All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and leave.We'll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of whom or where they are. They're illegal!!! France will welcome them.

4) All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 days unless given a special permit!!!! No one from a terrorist nation will be allowed in. If you don't like it there, change it yourself and don't hide here. Asylum would never be available
to anyone. We don't need any more cab drivers or 7-11 cashiers.

5) No foreign "students" over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they don't attend classes, they get a "D" and it's back home baby.

6) The US will make a strong effort to become self-sufficient energy wise. This will include developing nonpolluting sources of energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for a while .

7) Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for their oil. If they don't like it, we go someplace else. They can go somewhere else to sell their production. (About a week of the wells filling up the storage sites would be enough.)

8) If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the world, we will not "interfere." They can pray to Allah or whomever, for seeds, rain, cement or whatever they need. Besides most of what we give them is stolen or given to the army. The people who need
it most get very little, if anything.

9) Ship the UN Headquarters to an isolated island someplace. We don't need the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, the building would make a good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.

10) All Americans must go to charm and beauty school. That way, no one can call us "Ugly Americans" any longer. The Language we speak is ENGLISH...learn it...or LEAVE...Now, isn't that a winner of a plan?

The Statue of Liberty is no longer
saying "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses." She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'you want a piece of me?

Answer 2

In this order:

1) Continued government spending (no, not just on the war) - even if somehow you could raise enough revenue to cover it, government spending is too high a % of GDP - - that is the state overriding the consumers when it comes to resource allocation.

2) The notion that somehow by raising tax rates, one can "solve" the problem by dramatically raising tax revenue through a hike in tax rates. We tried this under Bush '41 and federal revenue in inflation-adjusted dollars FELL. Bush '43 cut tax rates and federal revenue in inflation-adjusted dollars has gone UP. Moreover, the stronger the economy the less "need" there is for government spending. A tax hike after 17 Federal Funds Rate hikes would cripple the economy - right now the strong economy is what's holding everything up.

3) Terrorism. The simple cost of the threat of it is another yoke for the economy to bear.

4) Outmoded Infrastructure - - local roads and bridges were built for a lowere population; same for water, sewer and, at the federal level, electricity transmission. We really need to double the transmission capacity in the US within the next quarter century. This is related to 1) - it's not that $8TN is too much debt, it's that more than half of it was spent on total BS when there are real needs to be met.

5) Mexico. Anyone else notice the Peso is sorta kinda not holding its own - - - against the DOLLAR, which is flagging? Again, this relates to the debt - - - - there's always stuff that can or will hit the fan. The question is, do you have the balance sheet to sustain it - - we DON'T. What are we going to do when MX collapses? What are we going to do when China's economy slows? Do you have any idea what that will do to the South American economies that have been propped up by mineral exports to China?

Answer 3

I'm an American socialist (that's probably the first time you've ever heard somebody say it instead of labelling someone else that), and I respectfully disagree with your assessment, as well as those of all others who like to blame socialists.... because frankly, there are so few.

I have no idea why you are complaining about high taxes, since the US tax rates are among the LOWEST in the Western world. Haven't you travelled to Europe before???? Or even Canada or Australia? We're practically the only Western developed country left that doesn't have universal health care. (However, I DO agree that social security, medicare, & medicaid, etc. do need to be overhauled & reformed. I'm a fiscally conservative socialist, by the way, if you can fit that concept inside your mind.)

And you also seem to have no idea where most of our tax dollars go. A whopping 50% of federal discretionary spending goes to the US MILITARY & defense-related purposes. That's $440+ billion/year, which is a conservative figure, since it doesn't include black budget, VA, Nasa-military, foreign military aid, current wars, etc. How do you think we paid for our 7,000 nukes, 6,000 domestic military bases, 737 overseas bases, 11 carrier groups, B-1 Stealth bombers, F-22 Raptors, Trident submarines, 1.4 million man armed forces + 1.2 million reserves, as well as our new Space-based weapons & Theater Missile Defense?

Our military spending accounts for 50% of all military spending IN THE WORLD, and is greater than the next 20 countries COMBINED.

The most powerful & hi-tech military in the history of the world doesn't come free, you know. It's paid for by our society - in other words, it's socially subsidized. We have Big Government spending because the military is BIG.

And I'm sure you know who likes to spend BIG on the military - Democrats, too, but mostly it's Republicans. Both Reagan & Bush Sr + Jr, all big allies of the military, accumulated HUGE increases in federal budget deficits & debts because of military spending... and they simultaneously LOWERED TAXES??? While Clinton was also a spender, he did cut down and managed budget surpluses. But Bush Jr reversed that trend of fiscal conservatism, overspent $2.7 trillion, and now we're a total $8 trillion down the hole. We have to spend $200 billion annually just to PAY INTEREST on that debt.

And yet you come up with this strange idea that socialism is going to be the downfall of America, when the majority of Western European countries practice a mixed economy of socialism & capitalism. This is why they have higher tax rates, but for some mysterious reason, their economies are still chugging along even after 50+ years, and the euro has been consistently gaining strength against the dollar since its introduction. (And it's not as if they don't have militaries, either, they just spend a whole let less on them.)

I agree with you, we have no business being the world's police force (since we're not getting paid by the world to do it, nor have we been given the authority to do it by the world), and fiscally speaking, we don't have enough money to militarily enforce democracy worldwide.

So my conclusion? The biggest problem is US militarism & the growing military spending that supports it, ignored by the general populace... just like you're probably going to ignore this answer. While most of the American people might not know the numbers, any accountant can look at the books and tell you what's wrong.

Follow the money trail - what an irony that a socialist has to point this out to a capitalist.

Answer 4

Corporate-welfare. Since FDR experiment with Keynesian economics, the American executive has repeatedly incurred in deficit spending in order to keep profits up and therefore discourage unemployment. It is not a formula that always works for the working man, but it does always work for the corporations.
The US gov. employs much of its budget subsidizing companies such as Ford and Boeing. Please, check up on the budget. Defense is the largest sector of the budget. A good amount of it goes to private companies such as Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, and the privatized army Blackwater.
It is untrue that most of your taxes go towards entitlement programs. Most of your taxes end up spent in private companies that either receive free patents from the government (such as Boeing), sell services to the armed forces, need subsidies or use the US military to open markets abroad.
I would be pissed if i were you, though not at socialists, who have been absent in the US for 70 years. Rather, you should look at your media , your schools and ask why did they not tell me i spend most of my money keeping corporations rich.
By the way, the shrinking middle class is a 30 year phenomenon. The date in which the US had the largest middle class was the decade of the 60's and its decline has most to do with the loss of competition due to capital agglomeration and the favoritism of the US government towards bug business.
The biggest threat to the people of the US is most definitely privatization and the influence of big business lobbies on policy.
Oh, and about entitlement: the US ranks second to the UK in the ranking of the worst places for children among industrialized nations. It is not a matter of feeding crackheads, you are not even teaching, feeding or protecting kids.
\So I would say the corporate-government nexus is pretty much the biggest threat to the US population... oh, and blowback.

Peace.

Answer 5

Globalization! In combination with the unbridled capitalism, that you seem to be so fond of, globalization will only result in Feudalism. With the North American Union looming in the near future the days of government of, by and for the people is coming to an end. And why go back 100 years? This country had the largest middle class in the world 10 years ago! The New Deal expanded the middle class much more that the unbridled capitalism of 100 years ago did.

Answer 6

An honest observation.
America is in big trouble and I agree that the war is within.
The borders are left wide open for god knows who to enter and do whatever they choose. And drug addicts are rampant throughout American society, whether it be prescription drugs or man made crank, ect, ect, ect, so while the American masses are on a mission competing to see who can manage to score the most drugs, aka destroying whatever brain cells they have left, the gangs of drug dealers and murdering child molesters who come across the border from Mexico are having a ball running riot and as usual children are the ones who are paying the price for society failing to protect them. Mean while the drug addicts are living a better quality of life than the hard working middle class family's who cannot afford health care because the goverment takes the money to enable the scroungers of society to have a health care plan, so they can have a doctor prescribe them more drugs. Meanwhile we are at war with extremist Islamic facists and Nancy Pelosi is making nice with them, while they are killing and murdering our military in Iraq????????????
The mind boggles, the lunatics are running the asylum.

Answer 7

The complete breakdown of our political system known as Democracy due to the people we elected to do the peoples business who have been so busy doing little or nothing for the good of the American People and the Country....... Gridlock in the Congress, backstabbing, name calling, playing politics, corruption, no accountability, special interests, lobbyists, self interest by the Senators and Representatives, greed, lost touch with reality and the American People, Mismanagement of Money received through the taxing of the citizens....Etc. Etc.

Answer 8

You are correct. One thing however. Liberalisim is socialisim. It is what true liberals support. History and facts support this claim. You can also factor in Political Correctness. This is a serious crutch used by the left and unfortunately even people on the right have fallen into its trap by trying to appease those on the left who believe in it. If you eliminate modern day liberalisim and political correctness, you've got the battle won.

Answer 9

I am not going to mention GWB, but, your foreign policy has really affected your relationship with the world. When I was younger, we used to celebrate our relationship with the US, now we are really embarassed to associate with you.

Because you are competing with very strong trading blocks, including an ever emerging China, marketing a positive PR for America will certainly help it gain a competitive advantage. We think American brands are cheap and tacky over here!

Answer 10

I agree. Socialism is the biggest threat to America.

1861 - someone who made over $600 was subject to a 3% income tax.