Forum Post: Let's analyze things for a moment

How does this country operate? And what kind of impact could that operation have on the world? The answer to these questions would be almost as diverse as the number of people in it, but I think it goes something like this

• People have to elect their representatives to some government office either local, state, or federal

• If they do not elect them, there is no government. Then there would be anarchy or dictatorship

• Some people are rich enough to buy influence in government, so the country is for sale to the highest bidder, and this eliminates democracy

• Meanwhile, the rest of the people cast their votes based on what the politicians say they can do for them

• People in one part of the country want one thing, and other people in another part want something else (sometimes the exact opposite). With 535 voting members in Congress, there are that many theoretically possible divergent representations of what people want government to do for them

• If politicians want to get re-elected, they have to provide those people back home with the things they said they wanted in order to get elected in the first place

• Federal legislation gets stuffed full of pork in order for all the politicians in Congress to make their constituents back home happy

• The taxpayer has to pay for all the pork, but the taxpayer has no money, so Congress borrows it from the Fed

• The Fed prints up money and gives it to government

• The government spends it on the pork with no idea of how to pay it back (or even the intention to do so)

• The country goes further and further into debt in the process of wish fulfillment of its citizens in the form of pork-barrel spending

• People get mad because the debt keeps going up

• People blame Congress for the debt caused by pork spending that Congress did in order to fulfill citizen desires

• The country becomes polarized as to how to "fix" government that has overspent for decades with no idea of how to "fix" itself

• Nothing gets done year after year, decade after decade, to reduce the national debt

• The debt rises until it is in excess of yearly GDP

• The country sinks deeper and deeper into economic morass under the burden of the debt, heading for eventual bankruptcy and third-world status

• Upon US bankruptcy and default on debt obligations, the world plunges into a global economic collapse due to worldwide debt network (countries all owe each other and service each other's debts, so if one country defaults the link in the chain is broken and the house of cards collapses)

• The world enters a new Dark Age

Nighty, night...and sweet dreams