Obama's Going to Win and We're Screwed

With Obama almost certain to gain a victory, I'd like to take this time to make a few predictions as to what we're likely to see over the next four years.  And also to broadcast why I'm not voting for Obama, and why I'm not jumping on the bandwagon that will contribute to what's about to happen.

Four years ago, Obama made a lot of promises.  Now in 2012, many people are still out of work.  People are still paying high taxes.  They are still paying high costs for healthcare, or still not able to afford it.  A lot of people are disappointed.

In the current election, Obama is making the same promises and then some.  It's as if he's doubling down on his promises, and for some strange reason, it appears to be working.  There are millions are people saying, "The last four years have been disappointing, but I'm voting for Obama again anyway."

This sentiment is echoed in yesterday's idiotic endorsement from the Economist.  Even though they admit that Romney gave a spark of hope of being that better president in the first debate, they'd rather "stick with the devil" they know and reelect him.  I really don't understand this.

So, what's going to happen over the next four years?  More of the same, only worse.

Obamacare is going to do the most damage.  When it goes into full force in 2014 (only a year and two months away), people are finally going to understand what's in this plan, and they're going to be screaming.

The poor who make just enough money to be ineligible for subsidies are going to say, "You mean we have to pay for it?  We can't afford it."  Some will elect to take the annual tax (it's not a fine as per the Supreme Court) because it'll be cheaper.

Businesses are going to cut jobs and/or cut down employee hours to be below 30 hours to get around the requirement to provide healthcare.  There are already businesses seriously considering this TODAY.  When this actually begins to be a common practice, Obama will then begin an initiative to punish any businesses engaging in these "evil" practices and all hell will break loose, while sales of Atlas Shrugged will go through the roof.

Insurance companies will be forced to keep their rates at an artificially low level--so low that in a few years, the cash flow coming in will be insufficient to pay out claims.  These companies will either choose to stop writing health insurance, or just go insolvent.  Since future insurance bailouts are a definite no-go, this will ensure the introduction of the public option, which will eventually become the ONLY option, and the national anthem will be officially changed to be "O America."

 

Unemployment is going to continue to be a big issue.  It's going down now due to natural economic forces despite Obama's anti-corporation policies.  It may even get down to around 6% in 2013, but with Obamacare and higher taxes on the rich and small businesses on the docket, I expect unemployment to creep up again, and wouldn't be surprised to see it top out over 11% before 2016.

It's going to be called a Triple Dip recession.  I consider myself to be very fortunate to have kept my job during these tough times, but I have actual fears that I may not survive the next dip.  A vote for Obama could be voting me out of work.

Obama remains the King of Deficit Spending.  Keynes would have been proud of of his accomplishments.  The graph above shows the federal government's budget surplus or deficit through the years (unadjusted for inflation).  The biggest surplus happened during the Clinton years.  Bush had a pretty sizable deficit.  But see that big dip down to 1.4 Trillion?  That's Obama.  He didn't just "inherit" such a large deficit.  He CREATED it.  And Obama's nonchalant attitude on the Letterman show when asked about the deficit is very disturbing.  He said he didn't know what the national debt was and that "we don't have to worry about it in the short term."

What will happen in the next four years?  Will he continue not caring?  Are we to be the next Greece?  Some experts say our debt is actually healthy, but I don't know.  If we had to handle that large a debt by percent personally, we'd probably have to declare bankruptcy.

The Feds can print as much money as they need.  Print too much and the dollar becomes worthless.  Hyperinflation could become a reality.  In such an environment, we would have to be paid daily and spend that money immediately or lose it.  People would burn dollar bills just to stay warm.  Exciting!

Fortunately, experts predict the Feds will step in and not let this happen.  It definitely wouldn't happen in the next four years.  But what this does mean is that there will come a time where the US can no longer do any "Quantitative Easing" and there will be no further recourse to delay our debts.  This will invariably lead to higher taxes.

Iran will get even closer to building nuclear weapons.  Obama says that he's doing enough to stop this from happening, but I'm not convinced.  Romney appeared to much more concerned about this than was Obama in the third debate.

Also, as was evidenced in that debate, Obama seems unwilling to handle issues "all over the map."  He wants to handle one issue at a time.  He wants to remove our troops out of Afghanistan by 2014, no matter what.  His business-like approach to accomplish this concerns me, as it doesn't take into account any adverse situations that may arise between then and now.

Obama would rather bring our troops home and put them to work building bridges and schools.  (He actually said this in the third debate, and I'm surprised no one has jumped on it.)

It would be great if we could live in this imaginary world of peace, but unfortunately, the world is in turmoil.  If we withdraw completely, we do so at our own risk.  We can't count on a live and let die approach.  Our enemies will attack no matter what we do, and the question is, are we going to be ready?

There you have it ... my predictions.  In a nutshell, four more years of disappointment.  We will all witness the continuing failures of trickle-down government.

It'll be fun to come back to these predictions in 2016 and see how many came to pass.

And should Romney somehow win WI or PA or OH and squeak out a win, it'll still be fun to see how many of these predictions still come to pass despite how great I think Romney would be.  Or how many things would actually get worse.  But alas, Romney's chances to win wane daily now.

What gets me is, I don't think that these predictions are too hard to see.  I see several different people yelling these concerns as loud as they can, while a majority of the people close their ears and hold their nose while they vote for "more of the same."  I wish they could understand exactly what they're getting before it's too late.  I'd like to avoid this great call to impeach Obama when there exists no impeachable acts that he committed.

So why are so many people voting for Obama despite all these negative indications?  I think the answer comes down to one simple word: greed.  I'm not talking the "Wall Street" type of greed, but rather the "entitlement class" type of greed.  Everyone that's voting for Obama has been promised something.  But yet, when I try to pin down Obama's plan to deliver, it seems like nothing but a bunch of empty promises.

Obama promises to tax the rich more, but is very unclear as exactly how this will benefit the poor.  He mentioned in one of the debates that he already gave the middle class a tax cut, but I do my own taxes, and I didn't get one.  The only new "tax cuts" I can think of were two recent temporary measures: a "Make Work Pay" benefit of $800 a year per household for two years, and a Social Security tax holiday of 2% over the past two years.  If these were tax cuts, then they wouldn't be going away after two years.  Obama's current tax plan does absolutely NOTHING to cut down taxes on the poor and middle-class.  It is simply to increase taxes on the rich.  At least Romney's tax plan would reduce taxes on the poor and middle class, so I'm really at a loss as to why people think they're better off with Obama on this issue.  In four more years we poor and middle class people are going to be paying the SAME taxes (plus the "I can't afford medical insurance" tax I mentioned above), and we are still going to be crunched.

Obama promises that women will be better off with him as president.  These last couple of weeks, he and his ads have been bringing up abortion and equal employment and so on.  But what exactly can Obama deliver?  Abortion is already legal and is here to stay, and the president, whoever he may be, would have little power to change it.  And by the letter of the law, women already have equal employment opportunities.  There is still a question of practice, but again, there is very little a president can do.

Obama now officially supports gay marriage.  He announced this only a couple of days before picking up major contributions from gay donors at an already planned Hollywood fundraiser.  And yet, can anyone name one thing that Obama promises to do for gay people?  Don't they realize they're being played?  They're only going to be irate in four years when there still isn't a federal law enforcing the acceptance of gay marriage.

Obama promises citizenship to illegal immigrants.  This is an unmet promise from 2008.  He did try to get the Dream Act to pass, but that legislation was problematic.  He also gave an executive order giving a small subset of immigrants citizenship in the past couple of months.  How conveniently close to an election!  The funny thing is that Romney has a much more viable plan to provide an easier path to immigration.  Make them legal and make them pay taxes.  Again I'm at a loss as to what Latinos expect Obama will deliver as he was unable to deliver in the last four years.

So, Obama makes a whole series of empty promises, and he does this well, playing on that natural "entitlement" greed we all seem to have.  In some cases, Romney even provides better options, but he doesn't emanate that same sense of hope that Obama's good at doing.

So, yeah.  Obama's going to win, and we're all screwed.