Menu
Categories
This Week’s Sign of the Economic Apocalypse
August 4, 2012 Fun Facts

One in four New Yorkers is on Medicaid. That is expected to grow after Obamacare is fully implemented.

Oh, you’ll love this. One of my former students was in a dinner table argument the other night when his guest was railing on derivatives. I hope he reminded his guest who was the original purveyor of derivatives (hint: look at federal government budget gimmicks during the Johnson and Nixon administrations …). So check this out:

California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York are even securitizing their future tax revenue—that is, not merely borrowing with bonds that must be serviced but selling their projected tax collections to investors. So to “balance” their budgets today, they’re making it far harder to correct them in the future and locking in higher tax rates. Even Greece doesn’t do that.

Or how about this:

New York created an Albany-guaranteed “local government assistance corporation” to hide spending that would have run through the general fund. Illinois is borrowing short term for cash flow to make unpaid bills.

Lots of other goodies in this piece. I happen to live in one of the better-off neighborhoods in Rochester and of the 5 houses that surround mine, at least 4 of them are supported by someone on government payroll. We’re doomed. Volcker could make some money by selling advice on where to go to avoid the inevitable theft that is going to take place to take care of all this profligacy.

"3" Comments
  1. Thanks for fixing everything up, Wintercow!

    I wonder if California has issued carbon credit fee anticipation notes yet. (CFANS).

  2. One in four New Yorkers on Medicaid. I would be tempted to question that number, but I know Wintercow does not publish fanciful statistics. Horrifying.

    Not having ever been on Medicaid, or unemployment, or food stamps (I will admit to a lifetime $6000, or less, in USDA deficiency payments, plus having for eight years being under the USDA/Bysantine milk price support system), I wonder how many of these people getting Medicaid are actually working, and not are on the dole for unemployment, welfare, food stamps, free heating bills, et cetera.

    Not a bit of this can be happy, especially for the able-bodied younger people who get Medicaid and the other demoralizing largesse that progressives dispose upon them.

    This is a precursor to the apocalypse. We cannot dig ourselves out of this hole, this pit, without economic growth. We cannot support a generation, nor can they support us, without more people working in productive jobs. By productive, I do not wish to beg the question, but rather refer to producing things we need at an a price that is affordable freely.

  3. Pingback: Financial Apocalypse | Winter Ant

Leave a Reply
*