The fall of the Roman Empire is generally marked by the sacking of Rome in 455 AD by Alaric and the barbarians of the northern and Gallic tribes. That event, and its aftermath of economic collapse is considered by most Western historians as the significant and defining moment when the old Roman Empire fell and the birth of the dark ages began until the Restoration over 1000 years later.
In that event, most historians have concluded that over 60+% of the wealth of the Roman Empire was dispersed among the tribes in a series of sackings and events leading up to the final invasion of Rome by Alaric.
And yet, it pales in comparison to the amount of wealth being sent overseas by our own government over the past few years in the form of foreign entitlements—chiefly foreign aid, educational grants, and purchases of imported goods to fuel our ever demanding marketplace.
Although direct U.S. Aid amounts to a paltry 50 billion dollars in 2011, the United States also funds a great deal of other programs in indirect aid, through the departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy and other programs which indirectly go to foreign economic subsidies and entitlements. Ex-president Obama requested huge increases in various funds and subsidies in 2012-2016. The Strategic Climate Fund was scheduled for a 281% increase, the Global Food Security Fund is a 209% increase, and the International Clean energy fund a 117% increase. All of this is despite a massive shortfall in revenues and incomes those years.
We also allow tremendous amounts of foreign students to educate themselves at the American taxpayer’s expense, taking up valuable classroom space while America native born students are turned away at the University gates. Almost 700,000 international students are now in the United States, a 3% increase over last year. While the Department of Commerce claims that international students contribute 20 billion to the US economy, it fails to note that almost 40% of international students are on some form of aid and scholarships, and 30% are on full American taxpayer aid. This doesn’t even address that cost of denying seats to Americans either by need or skill.
Enormous amounts of aid flow outward from the US for hunger, while Americans go hungry in the poverty stricken slums, and in poor areas like the Appalachian highlands and the streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York.
We spend over 350 billion dollars a year in foreign oil imports from countries that keep their doors closed to American goods. 20+ billion is spent annually on the cost of the war on drugs rather than run a closed and secure border with a wall among things; not to mention the costs of illegal immigration.
Hundreds of companies annually pack up and move to other nations employing millions overseas rather than do business in the US where taxes and tax codes make doing business a difficult and expensive process. We spend hundreds of billions in military spending to secure other nations borders while our own go unprotected.
In short, America is being looted by foreign interests and needs, under the guise of entitlements and spending habits. While our seniors are being asked to lower their expectations of their retirement years savings and health needs, our foreign neighbors are lining up at the open doors of the US Treasury for their own gain. While American students are being turned away for seats in Yale and Harvard, other nations are accepted with open arms. While American children go hungry and without medical care, other nations children receive benefits at the hands of sympathetic American health care professionals. While we buy billions of gallons of oil from OPEC, our own oil industry is told to ‘go fish’ when they ask to plumb our own fields.
How do you loot a country with the most powerful military in the world? You do it in the marketplace and with the legal consent of its leaders.
While such deeds speak volumes about the generosity of the American people; we are doing so at our own peril and economic strength. We are sapping the wallets of our workforce in a failed effort to buy the good will of our neighbors.
We are being looted, and it will have the same results to us as it did to the Roman Empire unless the flow of money is staunched.
