Posts by Chris Collins5

Nancy Alvarez82 said:Neither hikes in sales tax, nor the failure to eliminate zero-rated rates, nor aggressive digital auditing, nor the relentless hunt for tax evaders, nor freezing debtor assets, nor any of these debt restructuring schemes for citizens and businesses, nor even cracking down on corporate profit stripping has done a single thing to actually boost federal tax revenue.
In fact, revenues have plummeted quite drastically because the American public and the entire economy have been bled dry by these frantic, predatory tax hikes.
The inevitable fallout from this mess will be diminished social services, gutted pensions, mass layoffs, and a mounting pile of new national debt.

Basically... it’s a total CATASTROPHE.

To put it in the words of a politician whose party is merely the third-largest non-nepotistic entity left in Washington after the Democrats and Republicans—referring to a certain moderate lawmaker—he suggested that the people running this country ought to pick up a modern economics textbook once in a while.

And that is precisely where the truth lies; we are being led by people who are hopelessly stuck in the past, simply because the global economic landscape has shifted entirely since the last time they bothered to open a book.

I can't get behind this. My take is actually the exact opposite.
They are light years ahead of the average American. That's why they pull the strings, and we spend months or years just reacting—only realizing too late that what they did wasn't actually for our benefit.

I don't know how old you are, but this is how I see it.
Look at the last 20 years in the States—so much has shifted, from laws to everything else. Just thinking off the top of my head... out of the thousands of legislative changes, how many were actually good? How many were better than what we had before?
Basically, look at the success rate of these policies meant to improve this country and raise our standard of living.
When you arbitrarily pick a number—one person thinks it's 99%, another thinks it's 0%—you're looking at total incompetence, solving problems through trial and error...

So compare them!

I THINK we could see prices dip down to $800-$900/oz this fall...
If that actually happens, I'm going all in—100%—and just seeing where it goes.

It all comes down to the Federal Government—whichever party is in power—and our own collective mindset.

The way I see it, our mentality is stuck in this loop where we’d rather sit idle for $3,000 than actually put in the work for $5,000.
I'm worried that won't trigger the shifts we need in that sector, which means nothing else will change either...
Americans really need to start stepping up and getting to work.

Robert Vaughn10 said:In a bubble economy fueled by massive import tariffs and sales tax, that isn't even the main issue. The priority should be slashing imports and cutting government spending. People living off the taxpayer without providing any actual value are just draining resources that should be fueling the private sector. When layoffs happen in the private sector, it's bad news because that's where the real wealth is generated. Sure, some state-run entities might turn a profit, but you can count them on one hand. Most of them—like Amtrak, major shipyards, or Exelon—are basically just bleeding money. To actually spark growth and job creation, you need to provide tax incentives, cut the bloat from government agencies, and encourage reinvestment.
We don't need more debt. We need to curb our appetites, live more modestly, and ensure the basics: food and medicine.
The unrealistic lifestyle we could never actually afford needs to be scaled back before we hit total bankruptcy. Taking on more debt isn't the answer; it's just prolonging the agony. We have to lower our standards of living. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and this country is about to learn that lesson the hard way.

All that holds water, but how many years do you think it'll take before we actually reach a realistic standard of living at this level?

I read somewhere that 78,000 people were laid off this year—now the media is claiming another 50,000 are on the chopping block. If you believe the news... then those folks stop contributing to the treasury and start living off it for a while. Add wage cuts to the mix, and you've got even less money flowing back into the system. You can't fix a deficit just by slapping on crisis taxes—it's a chain reaction caused by falling consumer spending.
That drop in spending—along with plenty of other factors—eventually starves the budget all over again.
So, our options are to pile on more debt or sell everything off (at a massive discount)!
🤷