Flat Broke

You all know I love my peeps at Democratic Underground, right? In all seriousness I do appreciate their enthusiasm and their attempts to defend civil liberties. And sometimes you've just got to love the questions they come up with: How Does A Country As Rich As Ours Go Broke?

I love how the various commenters attempt to answer the question without realizing that it doesn't really mean anything. After all, I'm not sure what it means for a country to be broke- by any measure you come up with (GDP, whatever), the United States is the wealthiest nation in the world. Perhaps the question refers to the government being broke, but even that's misleading. We've been running a national debt since the Washington administration. Maybe the question refers to our budget deficit, but there's a simple answer if that's the case. We have budget deficits when the government spends more money than it takes in through taxes. Maybe I'm just confused as to the point, but a commenter named coalition_unwilling seems to be able to answer the question for us.

The military industrial congressional media complex redistributes wealth from the commons to rentiers and haute bourgeoisie through imperialist adventurism and resultant crony capitalism.

The wealth is still here but has been redistributed.

That's just awesome.