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Old 01-06-2010, 11:04 AM
 
Location: Sinking in the Great Salt Lake
13,139 posts, read 22,756,780 times
Reputation: 14116

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Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte View Post
The Federal Gov't owns roughly 650,000,000 acres of land

Printable Maps - Federal Lands

There are roughly eight buildable lots in each acre (43,560 sqft. divided by 5,000 sqft. = 8)

Some acreage is prime land (Cali, seaboard, etc) worth millions of dollars an acre, other land is not (worth maybe 10k to 50 per lot) so let's take 50k as the average worth of these roughly 5,200,000,000 buildable lots owned by the Federal gov't. That works out to $260 TRILLION Dollars in value. It's time the Federal gov't started selling off some of its land to China, Japan and our other creditors, (who would gladly take it for their citizens and corporations to immigrate here and then build houses and factories) in exchange for our debt.
Yea, take what is essentially your land (sure you can't build a house on it, but you can camp on it, hunt, fish, explore, get in touch with nature, graze your livestock and prospect on it any time you like.) and use it to make rich bankers and foreign creditors even richer. What a plan!

And on top of that, we'll let huge numbers of foreign settlers move in and squeeze us even more! What are you smoking?
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Old 01-06-2010, 11:05 AM
 
Location: Londonderry, NH
41,478 posts, read 59,649,774 times
Reputation: 24860
We don't.

If you borrow enough you effectively own the lender. China has lent us the money to buy their ever increasing industrial output until they allow themselves to become rich enough to sell their own stuff to themselves. Then they will cut us off from further credit and we will default on the debt. If they try to take land as compensation; that is what armies are really for.

I have a suspicion that there is so much international debt that the entire world financial system is about to collapse because the interest can no longer be paid. We will have to start over with the world’s wealth based on access to vital commodities and the industry to turn them into useful goods. The bankers will be busted until they can fool us with borrowing instead of paying cash.
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Old 01-06-2010, 11:42 AM
 
Location: OCEAN BREEZES AND VIEWS SAN CLEMENTE
19,893 posts, read 18,406,507 times
Reputation: 6465
Quote:
Originally Posted by AeroGuyDC View Post
If I could personally escort you out of this country, i'd do it in a heartbeat. You deserve nothing less for such an assertion.

(PS. It wouldn't be Mr. Rogers knocking on your door, I can assure you that. )


Mr. Rogers, is putting it mildly!
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Old 01-06-2010, 12:06 PM
 
18,223 posts, read 16,832,842 times
Reputation: 7523
Quote:
Originally Posted by GregW View Post
We don't.

If you borrow enough you effectively own the lender. China has lent us the money to buy their ever increasing industrial output until they allow themselves to become rich enough to sell their own stuff to themselves. Then they will cut us off from further credit and we will default on the debt. If they try to take land as compensation; that is what armies are really for.

I have a suspicion that there is so much international debt that the entire world financial system is about to collapse because the interest can no longer be paid. We will have to start over with the world’s wealth based on access to vital commodities and the industry to turn them into useful goods. The bankers will be busted until they can fool us with borrowing instead of paying cash.
The best, most reasonable answer I've gotten to my question thus far, Greg. So do you think the USA could survive a default and the ensuing world-wide chaos that is sure to follow? Could we muddle through intact, or do you think it would be total lawlessness ala Road Warrior kind of stuff?
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Old 01-06-2010, 02:16 PM
 
Location: Del Rio, TN
39,809 posts, read 26,394,291 times
Reputation: 25704
On a different note, federal land ownership is a sore point in many Western states. Unlike any other property owner, the federal government pays no property taxes to the counties where they own properties. Hence county budgets in areas where 90% of land within the county is federally owned are badly underfunded. Counties do get a percentage of proceeds from sale of timber off federal lands (Payments in leu of Taxes), but with the near elimination of logging on federal lands that has been dramatically reduced. Plus the federal government does a poorer job of managing forest lands than the state does.
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Old 01-06-2010, 02:51 PM
 
Location: In a house
5,232 posts, read 8,394,845 times
Reputation: 2583
Quote:
Originally Posted by monkeywrenching View Post
you have to remember that the federal goverment does not own that land in the 1st place, and has stolen it from the very states it is in, in the 1st place.

hw about getting a federal govement that has a budget that stays within a complete budget of 2% of the total gdp.

Thats not remotely true. In the case of most western states where this land is the federal govt owned it well before the states there now even existed. The biggest exception being Texas which was an independent sovereign nation before becoming a state and dictated as a term of statehood that all public land belongs to the state & not the feds.
But in the rest since they were territories of the US before statehood and no provisions turning public land over to the state were put in place its still federal land.

That said it doesn't belong to the Govt so much as it belongs to us, the people. I'll be damned if we should give it to foreign countries to settle debt. Those vast open spaces are one of the things that sets us apart from most other modern countries.

If you dont like our debt then we need to stop electing people who spend when we are broke.
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Old 01-06-2010, 03:39 PM
 
18,223 posts, read 16,832,842 times
Reputation: 7523
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tin Knocker View Post
If you dont like our debt then we need to stop electing people who spend when we are broke.
I hear that, but the damage has already been done, and getting "good" people into Congress is like tossing a man who claims to be crippled into a rattlesnake pit---if he scrambles out, then he was a fake to begin with. If he doesn't crawl out, then he dies. BUT we have found an honest man!
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Old 01-06-2010, 03:43 PM
 
Location: The Woods
18,337 posts, read 26,421,493 times
Reputation: 11335
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte View Post
I'm deadly serious. I know it's a bitter pill to swallow, but how else does the USA raise roughly 50-100 TRILLION dollars to pay its debts that will accrue over the next 50 years? Will China continue to loan us the money? Do we have any other means to pay off our debts at present? And please, none of this silly stuff, "balance our budget and spend within our means" We're already decades past that.
Print enough paper. Make the dollar worthless. Replace it. I suspect this is the plan in fact.
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Old 01-06-2010, 03:44 PM
 
Location: Land of debt and Corruption
7,545 posts, read 8,311,101 times
Reputation: 2888
I heard the states of California and Arizona are mortgaging their government buildings now to make ends meet. When will they stop this spending frenzy, cut their budgets, and become fiscally responsible? What's next?
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Old 01-06-2010, 03:48 PM
 
Location: The Woods
18,337 posts, read 26,421,493 times
Reputation: 11335
Quote:
Originally Posted by Toyman at Jewel Lake View Post
On a different note, federal land ownership is a sore point in many Western states. Unlike any other property owner, the federal government pays no property taxes to the counties where they own properties. Hence county budgets in areas where 90% of land within the county is federally owned are badly underfunded. Counties do get a percentage of proceeds from sale of timber off federal lands (Payments in leu of Taxes), but with the near elimination of logging on federal lands that has been dramatically reduced. Plus the federal government does a poorer job of managing forest lands than the state does.
Quite true. The Constitution says the feds must get a state's consent to own any property in that state. The feds pulled a fast one in the West and included "consent" in the statehood acts, so they couldn't get statehood without consenting. Now, back when the Homestead Act (and also, the mining laws that let people patent their claims) was giving land to Americans, it wasn't seen as a major issue. Fast forward to the federal policy of holding onto all lands (in the 1990's the feds stopped granting patents on mining claims, entirely ending any significant way of putting land in private hands), and it's a major issue...
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