Detroit: A Microcosm of The U.S.

By Chris Rossini

Yesterday, Donald Trump gave an "economic" speech in Detroit. He peppered the speech with talk of "cuts" and "cuts" and "cuts". That's all well and good to listen to, but Americans have been hearing that rhetoric from Republicans for decades. Government has done nothing but increase in its size and scope despite all the promises. The two parties have acted as a tag-team, passing the baton to each other, and taking turns in snuffing away our liberty and prosperity.

Would Donald Trump actually cut the size of government as president? It's unlikely. Usually politicians promise cuts with their left hand, while their right hand generates even more government growth. 

America needs a complete and comprehensive cut to the totality of the federal government. For example, when Ron Paul ran for president, he proposed cutting $1 trillion from the federal budget in his first year. He wasn't playing a shell game. Trump, on the other hand, is almost definitely just fishing for votes. 

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the U.S. government's size will be cut voluntarily. Its relentless expansion will most likely come to an end with a serious financial crisis. Economic laws always win in the end. The market always defeats the state. In the meantime, politicians merely pass the bag to one another with the hope that they're not the ones holding it when the music stops playing.

It's worth noting that Trump was in the city that is a microcosm of the U.S. as a whole. Detroit should act as a warning call for all Americans. 

Even Bloomberg View admits the obvious about Detroit:

The city collapsed mostly because it overpromised what it could deliver to public employees and others, then borrowed too much to try to make good on those deals. All of that, plus a combination of a rapidly declining tax base -- the city has lost 1 million residents since the 1950s...

Has the U.S. federal government overpromised and overborrowed?

Here's a chart of unfunded liabilities:

One hundred trillion dollars worth of unfunded promises. Does that sound like "overpromised" to you?

How about federal government borrowing?

Does the word "overborrowed" come to mind? And did you notice that both Democrats and so-called "limited-government" Republicans have amassed this debt together?

No worries though. Everyone continues to whistle past the graveyard. Just yesterday, Nobel Prize winning "economist" Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times:

the most important thing we need is sharply increased public investment in everything from energy to transportation to wastewater treatment.

How should we pay for this investment? We shouldn’t — not now, or any time soon. Right now there is an overwhelming case for more government borrowing.

Read those last two sentences again. This is the mentality that has brought down more civilizations than we can count. 

Take a look at Detroit and imagine it on a much larger scale. Unless, government drastically reverses course, that's where the pied pipers are leading us.