CHECKMATE: The Populace is About to Get CRUSHED!

Dear Reader,

How much has big government given us, you might ask?

It’s gotten us a debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 100%, projected to go as high as 193% by 2049, a U.S. deficit that’s now expected to reach $900 billion by the end of fiscal year 2019, and a national debt that recently exceeded $22 trillion, upon which we’re paying $1.5 billion per day in interest.

Does this sound sustainable?

It’s extremely difficult to connect direct dots as to why some things work and others fail in this extremely nuanced world. It’s the reason why political arguments generally go nowhere – because anyone can cherry pick (like all politicians do) to back up their biases.

Throw in the fact that it takes years of policies playing out to truly affect the economy and it’s nearly impossible to communicate effectively across a halfway interested population with almost everyone demanding instant gratification on the backs of others.

Especially when it comes to government, the majority of people are so far removed from the direct consequences of government that most just end up resorting to group-think.

I was driving to my gym to work out this morning and started thinking about how in recent years, the word liberal has morphed into progressive and new political celebrities have pushed their way into the public eye. Trump, for that matter, had an element of celebrity X-factor. Consider that New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in particular, has appointed herself as the new face of the liberal agenda – and though the names and faces have changed, the overriding themes are strikingly familiar.

Ocasio-Cortez has millennial charisma and is, by the way, only 29 years old and is beloved by the liberal agenda because her momentum builds more momentum. She is the “brains” behind the proposed Green New Deal, a reference to FDR’s New Deal – which expanded government intervention and set into motion plans that are ultimately burying the U.S. economy, namely the Social Security safety net. At that time, there was the INITIAL stimulus of job creation and the rebuilding of America’s ailing infrastructure that did need investment during the Great Depression.

That was then, and this is now: the nation is quite different than it was in the 1930s, and unlike FDR’s New Deal, Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal is based on extremely controversial  environmental principles, wealth redistribution, and spending on a level any clear-headed citizen would balk at.

Even the biggest boat will ultimately sink with a small, uncontrolled leak. I know without a shadow of a doubt that people think the U.S. is “too big to fail” and that cockiness is what will ultimately sink this ship, along with an aloofness towards the long-term consequences.

At CrushTheStreet.com, we do what we can to educate those based on what we feel is the overall good of the long-term success of the country. Although this might mean deferred gratification, it’s all about sustainability and responsibility to future generations. But there is an overwhelming force that is demanding more and more big government, which is poisoning the system.

This isn’t anything new… 

This isn’t the only attempt to repackage FDR’s New Deal: from Harry Truman’s Fair Deal to John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, and Barack Obama’s “new foundation for growth,” we’ve seen it all before. Under close inspection, it’s always big-government largesse rehashed, repurposed, and rerun like an old sitcom that wasn’t all that great in the first place.

While FDR’s New Deal may have restored confidence to an economically ravaged nation, no one at the time could have foreseen that it would engender third-rate copycat initiatives, retrofitted to push bigger-government ideologies and spending sprees in times of record debt and deficit.

The Green New Deal outline has levels of government spending of between 40 and 50% of America’s gross domestic product. This would require doubling the current government expenditures to between $84 trillion and $105 trillion over 10 years.

What the deal is proposing – and equally importantly, what it would cost – are difficult for any reasonable individual to process. However, Brian Riedl, a Manhattan Institute budget expert, managed to calculate the 10-year costs using nonpartisan sources, and the results are shocking. 

• $32 trillion for a single-payer healthcare plan;
• $6.8 trillion for a government jobs guarantee;
• $2 trillion for education, medical leave, job training, and retirement security;
• between $5 trillion and $40 trillion to fund universal basic income to support those who are “unwilling” to work.

Even if every billionaire and company came together and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into this investment, the aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient.

But then, this proposal was never really based on pragmatics – only on wishful thinking, which undergirds such ideas as “let’s mandate that everybody have an income, whether they intend to work or not” and “I don’t know how we’ll pay for all of this, but we’ll figure it out later.”

Still, Ocasio-Cortez and her followers will continue to push their agenda, promoting it as a new solution to our nation’s ills. In the final analysis, of course, the Green New Deal isn’t really new – and if implemented, will cost a whole lot of green.

Something I must point out, especially as it pertains to what we do here at CrushTheStreet.com, is that when massive amounts of money are changing hands for better or worse, there are trends to profit from, and I can guarantee you that we will be in the thick of it… It’s going to be a bumpy ride, but I assure you that for those diligently seeking truth, there is light at the end of the tunnel.