Almost ten years and this is the first time I have pissed you off? That's incredible. I have made a lot more provocative posts than this one.

From where I sit, I see an aging nation (yes, myself included) drifting away from its most productive years and permitting changes that will permanently alter the ability of this nation to produce wealth. I see a new "New Deal" that appeals to a whole generation of folks who lost their shirts in first the stock crashes/dot.com scams of 2000 or the 2008 concerted attack against US financial institutions from foreign entities.

They're tired. They have lost faith in the system. They see the evil getting rewarded. They have lost their homes and their jobs. Their security net has so many holes it can't hold anything anymore.

Suddenly promises sound good. Fundamental changes to the bigest industries don't generate uproar. Too many just want to see the rich taken down any way they can and something to replace that security blanket.

People need to realize the government can't do that. They can legislate ANYTHING. They can legislate a million dollar a year salary for everyone, but it doesn't MEAN anything. We are losing the wealth to back it up and the wealth ALWAYS comes from business and CAPITALISM.

Until this is understood, and understood well, I will shout it from the rooftops. Because socialist systems are unsustainable without adequate capitalist wealth funding them. When our biggest industries are collapsing we need to seriously look at sustainablity.

We've never been quite at this point before. Sure poverty was more universal and deeper during the Great Depression, but we had ouw OWN factories to create more wealth for us. Now we have far less factories than our population demands for wealth production.

POPULATION /FACTORY RATIO

The population to factory ratio is hurting. We have let the factories close down and used new ones built overseas. The result is less REAL wealth on American soil. Production is the very HEART of wealth creation.

So here we are and we face the future with a failing education system, endless diversions, decreased work ethic, decreased morale, decreased business morals and facing the huge competition from overseas in wealth production and labor.

We need to retool. We need to teach basic market economics. We need to rebuild our factory base - from Silicon Valley to Detroit.

If we do not. If we simply focus on free healthcare for everyone, higher taxes on the rich and new "green" pollution controls we are literally putting the statue of liberty under the guillotine and dooming this nation to genuine 3rd world status in about thirty years - when the population demographics over-populate the cities with disproportionate numbers of the predominantly unskilled and uneducated, for whom English is a poorly spoken second language.

You think it's impossible? Look around at how fast this nation shook under the financial assault of October 2008? Look at the empty shopping centers, the worn out cars limping along the highways. Look at the foreclosures and the folks living in motels, while their former homes get rented out and neighborhood after neighborhood goes to seed?

It's a numbers game. Those who reproduce the most - reproduce those who need the same amount of food and shelter yet create the least wealth. That's not sustainable. That's how third world countries are formed: Less educatable people reproducing incessantly. It's happening here right now. And the burden on the wealth creators is that much heavier. They need to support these folks, feed them and try to educate them so that they can be productive. Mexico is a shining example - or Brazil. If this happens the rich/poor divide increase - just as in these countries. The government assumes more and more power and the nation gets ever poorer - with a few rich dictators and cronies sucking up any wealth that's left.

The writing (or graffiti) is on the wall.

I can read it.

So, yes, I'm yanking chains and pulling the fire alarm switch. If it makes folks think about where the country is heading - even just a little bit more - I think it is worth it.