Imports and Oil Are Impoverishing America

Only fools and scoundrels say "entitlement" programs are the reason America is becoming a pauper nation.

We can't pay for the $700 million per day in OPEC oil alone which we import -- that's a big part of the problem. We burn 300 billion gallons of oil per year (20*42*365*10**6), one third from OPEC, two-thirds in toto from foreign countries that has to be paid for somehow.

COST AT $3/GALLON FOR OPEC OIL: $300,000,000,000 ($300B) per year
COST per day for OPEC oil: $821,917,802 ($821M) per day

COST FOR IMPORTED NON-OPEC OIL: $300B per year

TOTAL COST FOR IMPORTED OIL: $600B per year or $1.6B per day

In addition, there is the military cost of protecting oil supply lines, not just for OPEC oil bound for USA, but also for Europe and other allies; without the need to maintain the 5th Fleet in Bahrain, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the military presence in Nigeria, Myanmar, Saudi, etc., the USA War Budget would be much less; perhaps the cost of OIL WARS funded by borrowing is about $500B per year, or an oil subsidy of about $3 for each gallon of imported oil.

So what do we get for all this money spent on foreign oil? Oil spills must be paid for by users, and as it's refined, it creates refinery pollution, takes 20 gallons of drinkable water to refine each barrel, and after being used, leaves only : AIR, GROUND and WATER POLLUTION.

Where do we get the money to pay for all this oil and the oil wars? We need about $1.2 TRILLION ($1,200,000,000,000) to pay for imported oil and foreign oil wars, not counting the ancillary costs of foreign "aid" and years of treatment for wounded and maimed veterans of oil wars, the health consequences of permanent lung damage to kids, the closer they live to freeways the more damage, lung problems and other oil-related costs, and so on.

WE DON'T HAVE EXPORTS TO PAY FOR THIS OIL.

SO WE BORROW THE MONEY FROM FOREIGN COUNTRIES, IMPOVERISHING OURSELVES.

Is this too difficult to undersand? Why has it not hit the mainstream media?

Even worse, the other shoe of impoverishing USA is the export of our good manufacturing jobs. Our industries have been bankrupted, one after the other, and exported to countries without health care, retirement, OSHA, and with slave wages and no pollution controls.

SCHOLIUM: When you average 400 million overseas workers making $1 per hour with 100 million former US workers making $25/hour the wages and living standard of 500 million workers falls to $5/hour. That would be below the federal "poverty level", thus eo ipso "impoverishing" us.

Importing our manufactured goods from countries such as China benefits some firms immeasurably, but, as the wages, pensions and living standards of the USA fall, it hurts the general welfare and impoversishes the country that can't make enough stuff to pay for the imports.

We don't export goods to PAY for all our imports -- which just land in the dump (Walmart stuff) and as toxic waste (oil that gets burned).

It does not seem sane to think that if we outsource our good manufacturing jobs, we can pay for the imports of expensive manufactured goods with fast-food jobs, financial shenanigans, health-care, security, make-work and non-productive jobs, and "creating" money via Treasury Tricks.

Ironically, the same thing happened to the Spanish Empire, when they outsourced their manufacturing to English and Dutch traders -- spending the New World gold on luxuries, and forcing the impoverished Grandees to wear "false front" clothes to keep up appearances, just half-garments in front and rags in back.

Similarly, we are trying to "keep up appearances" by borrowing money to retain our insane belief that we're still a rich nation. Calls for ending pensions and further raids on Social Security, education and other former benefits of our once-rich society will inevitably succeed, because we can't continue spending fantasy money from make-work and overhead jobs.