The USA One Year from Now – September 2010

Introduction – This is a look at things that may very well come to pass in the USA. It is impossible to see the future but educated guesses are of course possible and may or may not come true. No one can predict with certainty what is going to happen. Take a look.

Job Losses – The jobs lost each month continue to be substantial. 85% of all new jobs created are non-productive jobs as in government. The printing presses keep rolling and government jobs are created. Not any real addition to the economy, just a prolonging of the inevitable. Businesses keep closing.

Retail – Malls are ghost towns. Many are closed. The ones remaining open have numerous vacancies. Parking spots right by the entrance in the rain come easy. There are few shoppers inside and even fewer carrying packages. Sales are abundant. Going out of business clearance sales are out there. People will be thinking of new uses for malls since the retailers are not bouncing back.

Fast Food – They were starting to advertise the $1.00 loss leader meals in 2009. They were unable to survive using this as a marketing model. They promoted large portions at a low price. People were tempted to go load up on junk food to fight being hungry not knowing how toxic this food really is. The fast food retail outlets are now starting to close. They gave up on the policy of offering cheap food to survive until the economy turned around. The people came in to the stores and bought the cheap food on special having no excess funds to spend on point of sale splurges or specials. Now the once considered easy to get jobs in fast food are cherished as scarce and the wages paid are being cut back due to more workers available than jobs. The locations doing the best are staying open.

Some independent operators able to offer cheap low quality food are taking over the former chain fast food restaurant locations and are able to sell cheap meals. They have no advertising, no corporate drain and do not have to buy any products from the home office. They rely on drive by and walk by traffic. They keep open longer hours with the chains being forced to close earlier and open later to reduce overhead. These independents are not raking in great profits but the people owning them are buying themselves a job with long hours but it beats not having anything. The chains will suffer from this since the independents can offer more value for the money.

Auto Industry – Sales are awful. The dealers are extending credit but it is getting tighter. They were extending credit and writing worthless paper they were selling on Wall Street with a high yield but this paper has been going bad and is not easy to sell anymore. This forced them to tighten lending criteria forcing more buyers out of the new car market. This also increased demand for used cars. Auto repairs are booming as people keep their cars longer. Auto parts are also booming. Body shops do bad as people prefer to keep their insurance checks rather than fix their cars.

People run behind on auto insurance and they keep canceling policies in wholesale quantities. In many states this creates criminals out of people who need to drive to work but cannot pay their auto insurance. When they get caught they get fined, get restricted licenses, lose their freedom, lose their cars etc. This makes the problems worse. More and more people are behind on their car payments and are ducking repossession. People swap cars with their friends and relatives so the repossession agents cannot find the cars.

Gas Prices – The Middle East tensions have caused gas prices to spike. The declining dollar and Middle East tensions have driven USA gas prices to $6.00 a gallon at the pump. People cannot afford to drive to work at their low paying jobs. There is no remedy for this in sight. Now expenses are forcing people out of work.

Medical – The new health care system has taken a toll on doctors. Doctors have had to put up with the DEA, FDA, State Medical Regulators, Insurance Companies, Lawyers and now the severely reduced payouts from the new insurance plan have caused many doctors to quit. Some just flat out retire early. Others leave the country going to other countries where they find they can get a medical license fairly easy. They soon learn they can practice medicine freely without government interference and the lawyers rarely if ever get an opportunity to sue them for malpractice. The doctors being adept students learn the foreign languages fast. Then Doctors from third or four world countries come to the USA to practice.

Standards are lowered and they get licensed easily. Coming from a country where they were making $600 to $1500 a month as a doctor, the thought of making $5,000 to $7,000 a month under the new health care plan is intoxicating to them. The USA doctors leaving were used to making $20,000 to $50,000 a month and were not going to work for lower wages. They find that in other countries they can earn $100,000 to $150,000 a year but their malpractice insurance is nothing compared to US, their housing costs are lower, the private schools are bilingual and way superior to the USA, and their freedom and quality of life is much higher.

Many hospitals have gone out of business due to reduced payouts. Health care is still handed out freely to illegal aliens who continue to rape the US taxpayers for all they can get and they have the full support of Obama. Pharmaceuticals are expensive. Doctors prescribe more and more of the cheaper older drugs out of financial necessity.

Euthanasia thinly disguised as denial of future benefits is in play. No more spending money on people terminally ill. They lose the last few months or years of their life to cut medical expenses. The rich just pay their own expenses and continue treatment as now.

Freedom – This is only a memory. Now they have a no drive list one has to clear when crossing state lines. Visas are required to leave the USA. One must show roots in family and assets before they will let you leave the country. They want to feel confident that you will leave. The prisons are full and overflowing. Health care in prison is close to non-existent. The food served to inmates is cheap garbage and quantities are restricted. No more overweight inmates. Prisoners are forced to work or are punished. The work offsets prison costs and is a source of cheap labor, which has grown to significant numbers.

Starting industries using prison labor to manufacture and assemble products has become the new rage. The complexity of the work has to be kept to a minimum but it is still profitable. Public companies doing this are starting IPO’s and hitting big. Prisoners get paid so little these companies can compete on the world market. Remember they are also paying the inmates with cheap US dollars. Prison labor is comparable in cost to slave labor and in many ways the same thing only harsher. People get harsh prison sentences for any infraction against any government. Crimes against other persons tend to be lightly investigated but punishments are stiff for these crimes too. Building new prisons is another booming industry. The government realized that a prison workforce provides productive jobs and it even creates non-productive jobs like correction officers.

Courts – The insane civil litigation cases are continuing. The judges needing work let them go on. The rich use the corrupt civil litigation system to exploit those with less money. The Federal Criminal Courts have gone from a conviction rate of 87% to 98%. Many Federal Districts have conviction rates of 100%. When charged with Federal crimes people just negotiate for the best sentence they can get. Many were not even aware of the crime they were charged with. Criminal attorneys are so ineffective people stop using them considering them a waste of money. Judges stopped following the law and just do what they want. Since the population is mostly poor many lawyers are out of work.

Law Enforcement – The police state rolls on. Taser use and abuse is widespread. Police commit brutality on camera and nothing seems to happen to them. Police have now started to steal from people in traffic stops and when investigating crimes in homes and businesses. Giving such unchecked power to police always results in this. The police always think they are able to control themselves in a responsible fashion. Complaining to internal affairs is pointless and can result in retaliations. Fear of police is at an all time high. Police drug and alcohol abuse has reached unprecedented proportions.

The police and the criminal gangs are becoming closer and closer soon to merge like they did in Mexico. Police spend the majority of their time on crimes against the government. Things like expired car tags, firearm licensing violations, drug violations, building permit violations, are high on their list of priorities. The police have little time for violent crime like rape, assault, armed robbery etc. They still take reports but the case clearance rates are under 10%. People know that if they do not get caught at the scene of the crime they are probably going to get away with the crime. Child and family services have gotten awful. Children are taken away from their parents at the drop of a hat. Any complaint by anyone is believed and investigated even anonymous tips by email. The judges let this go on not wanting to create any enemies in government. The state agencies have figured out ways to generate profits from taking children away from families.

Roadblocks in many areas are common. Police grill citizens for something to do. It establishes their power and conditions the people. Protestations regarding the constitution are likely to result in taser use and confiscation of the vehicle. The police only care about other police and government officials. There is a them and you attitude instilled in them. The tail is wagging the dog. The real estate is the United States but it is not the United States.

Riots – They are starting to be more common. Usually they occur in the poor residential areas. They are well tolerated by the government. They pose no risk to the government, just the locals and the retailers in the area. The police get a chance to test their latest crowd control weapons on a live audience and this is invaluable to the government. They get to fill up their prisons with more workers. The riots also serve to condition the police, in other words make them harder on their fellow citizens because rioters can truly hurt the police. The riots serve to assist the police state in the long run.

Citizen Resistance – There is not much of this. Occasionally a person goes nuts and takes out a few police or low government workers. These people are never a threat to the government. They explode spontaneously and act on their own. Most of the people really opposed to the government left already seeing the writing on the wall. Those remaining trusted in the government and believed the promises of the politicians. Bet they won’t do that again if they ever have a chance to make that decision again. When a police state gets empowered they a lays leave the door open for those who understand the game with some assets to leave. They want the potential troublemakers to go away and live elsewhere. They want the people who trust and believe in them to stay for obvious reasons. After a while when the cat is out of the bag so to speak they then lock down the country to stop a mass exodus and large capital flight. They also worry about a labor drain. In this regard they may start to focus on incarcerating more educated and skilled people so as to be able to manufacture more sophisticated products. Don’t underestimate the extent they will go to. Think this is not real, go read the constitution and then say that.

Gun Control – The government is still trying to get the people to turn in their guns based on some legislation. The states asserting their rights are trying to fight this out in the Federal Courts. That will go nowhere. The police state rolls on with great progress in spite of the gun ownership.

Wars – The US continues to fight the oil wars and play the policeman of the world. Nations pay less and less attention to them. Their influence gets less and less each year. They have fewer and fewer allies.

Conclusion – This is a guess as to the way things may go. Only time will tell.