EE.UU.: $18,000,000,000,000 de deuda
En este Black Friday 2014, la deuda de Estados Unidos sobrepasó los $18 billones. Eso representa una deuda de $124,000 por cada hogar americano o de $56,378 por persona.
El país tardó 205 años en acumular su primer billón de dólares de deuda en el año 1981, pero sólo nos ha llevado 403 días acumular nuestro billón más reciente. Incluso resulta complicado pensar en cifras tan grandes; si tuviera que contar hasta un millón necesitaría una semana; si quisiera contar hasta un billón tardaría 31,000 años.
Al igual que ocurre con nuestras deudas personales, puede que en realidad contraer deudas tenga algunas ventajas. La tele de pantalla plana y los regalos de Navidad que compramos endeudándonos probablemente incrementen nuestro nivel de vida y bienestar. Sin embargo, esta ganancia a corto plazo se paga a menudo con sacrificios a largo plazo. Y la moneda de pago de ese sacrificio son los intereses.
Los intereses son el precio de la deuda. De modo que cuando alguien compra un televisor mediante un plan de pagos, en realidad estamos comprando dos cosas: el televisor y la deuda que lo acompaña. Aunque pueda que merezca la pena gastar unos cuantos dólares extra para ver a nuestros jugadores de fútbol favoritos en HD, gastar una gran parte de nuestros ingresos en intereses puede reducir seriamente nuestra calidad de vida ya que tendremos que renunciar a otras compras para pagar los intereses.
Ése es el punto al que ha llegado nuestro país con sus intereses por la deuda nacional.
El año pasado, Estados Unidos gastó $430,000 millones sólo en el pago de intereses. Eso significa que cada año los contribuyentes están pagando $3,500 únicamente en intereses. Se trata de un dinero que no se está destinando a pagar carreteras, puentes, educación, investigación médica o defensa.
Esto se pone aún más aterrador. Los tipos de interés de la deuda nacional están históricamente bajos en este momento, en torno al 2.5%. Cuando suban, el pago de los intereses aumentará exponencialmente gracias a la “maravilla” de los tipos compuestos. Digamos que los tipos de interés suben al 5%, aún bajos según los estándares históricos. Eso significa que deberemos cerca de $1 billón anual sólo en intereses. ¡Es casi dos tercios de lo que el gobierno federal recauda cada año por la totalidad del impuesto sobre ingresos!
Menos servicios y mayores impuestos: el despilfarro del Tío Sam podría acabar perjudicándonos a todos.
SHAPIRO: To The Left, Lying About Rape Is Just Dandy
12.10.2014
This week, Rolling Stone printed an editor's note retracting one of the most highly praised pieces of investigative journalism in its history. That piece, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, alleged that several members of the University of Virginia fraternity Phi Kappa Psi, had raped a 19-year-old student named Jackie, including with foreign objects, as she lay on a floor covered with broken glass. The article resulted in the university suspending the fraternity's activities, and national outrage over the so-called "rape culture" on campus.
That rape culture supposedly leads to one in five women being sexually assaulted on campus -- a faulty statistic from a poll that didn't even ask women if they were raped or sexually assaulted, and instead defined sex while inebriated at any level as rape. With regard to reported rape, the federal government reports a rate of just 1.3 per 1,000 Americans. That is, of course, far too high. But it is not a rape culture by any plausible definition.
Nonetheless, the narrative of women as victims of brutish male society must be forwarded at all costs, for political purposes. If Americans are brutish sexists waiting to rape unsuspecting women, bigger government becomes a necessity. That's why President Obama has cited that one-in-five statistic, and suggested that America experiences "quiet tolerance of sexual assault."
In order to forward that narrative, all rape stories are treated as fact sans investigation of any kind. And so Jackie's story of gang rape received plaudits across the media landscape.
Then it fell apart.
The Washington Post quickly debunked the story. According to the Post, the fraternity says there was no event the night Jackie was allegedly raped, Jackie's friends "have not been able to verify key points in recent days," and one of the men named in Jackie's report stated that "he never met Jackie in person and never took her out on a date."
As the Rolling Stone report collapsed, members of the left jumped to defend Jackie. Sally Kohn of CNN.com tweeted that people should stop questioning Jackie's story: "While aspects of UVA rape story now in question, still unsettles me that pouncing by skeptics mirrored sort of doubt rape victims often face." Feminist Melissa McEwan wrote, "If Jackie's story is partially or wholly untrue, it doesn't validate the reasons for disbelieving her."
Under this logic, Atticus Finch was the villain in "To Kill a Mockingbird." After all, how dare he question the rape allegations of a victimized woman and defend Tom Robinson?
But for the left, it's narrative first, facts second.
The same holds true regarding allegations made by HBO star Lena Dunham, who wrote of her own alleged rape at the hands of an Oberlin "college Republican" named Barry. When it turned out that Barry, a readily identifiable person from Dunham's days at Oberlin, did not rape her, the media largely went silent; Dunham still has not spoken on the issue.
Narrative first. Facts second.
Here is the reality: All decent human beings believe that rape is evil. They also believe that false allegations of rape are wrong. These two positions are not mutually exclusive. They complement one another. False rape allegations do actual rape victims a tremendous disservice: to lump in false accusations of rape with true accusations of rape makes people more skeptical of rape victims generally, a horrible result. Rape should be taken seriously; rape accusations should be taken seriously. That means taking factual questions seriously, not merely throwing the word "rape" around casually, without evidence, and without regard for truth.
Jewels Green
ABORTIONTue Dec 9, 2014 - 1:52 pm EST
I worked at an abortion clinic. I was 100% pro-choice. Then two women opened my eyes.
For much of my life, I was so entrenched in the pro-choice worldview that I would completely shut down conversations that invited me to examine or question my position. Even with my history of being pressured into an abortion at 17 and surviving my subsequent suicide attempt, I remained a vehement and vocal advocate for abortion. I even worked at an abortion facility for five years. College, grad school, marriage, giving birth to three babies—nothing swayed me from my myopic view of a "woman's right to choose" abortion.
Four Novembers ago that began to change.
While discussing abortion and surrogacy in an online forum with a group of women I knew from a natural childbirth support group, the topic of in-vitro fertilization came up. I held fast to the standard pro-abortion rights theorizing that a "bunch of cells" could not possibly be as worthy of our respect and protection as an adult woman. I was baffled (but intrigued) by two voices speaking clearly, consistently, and compassionately (against the tide of a dozen opponents) in support of the right of these microscopic humans to live to maturation.
In the ensuing conversations neither Lindsey nor Lauren ever berated, belittled, or otherwise bashed those of us who disagreed with them—but they also never backed down. Their unshakable belief and eloquent defense of the value of all human life put a chink in the armor I'd spent decades carefully constructing. What was life if not a continuum from conception to death? Wasn't I once a tiny collection of cells? I finally began thinking about these issues of life in a new way.
Click "like" if you are PRO-LIFE!
As the forum expanded to discussions about surrogacy, I was primed for further interior examination of my long-held, never-before-questioned position... and I slowly began to consider that a child in womb just might be, in fact, a child.
Then I learned of a surrogate who was paid her full contract price to abort the baby she was carrying after the biological parents were disappointed by an in-utero diagnosis of Down syndrome. The chink in the armor became a chasm and the truth was blindingly clear: abortion is wrong. Abortion kills a living, growing member of the human family. And to quote Feminists for Life, women deserve better than abortion.
Only as I look back do I see the blinders. My willful ignorance, my avoidance of true introspection, my stubbornness. I can never thank Lindsey and Lauren enough for their unwavering witness to the sanctity of life. These two remarkable women (unknowingly at the time) set me on a path of discovery that culminated in my wholehearted acceptance of the right to life from conception to natural death and of a life devoted to furthering the cause of LIFE.
Thank you, Lindsey.
Thank you, Lauren.
Reprinted with permission from SecularProlife.
