Wow, the ever gracious and wise congress agreed to a deficit reduction of just under $40 billion. Compared to the actual deficit of several Trillion that is chicken feed and compared to the National Debt it is utterly inconsequential. Do you know how much a single trillion dollars is? Actually do you know how much a million dollars is and if you have that much do you recall how hard you had to work to get it (unless you had a parent who was willing to work and just gave it to you…)? Well if, starting on the date commonly ascribed to the birth of Jesus, you had been given one million dollars every single day until now… you still would not have but a fraction of a trillion dollars.
And if the ever-so-entitled feeders at the government trough are going to go to the wall in some of the most despicable and false scare language I’ve ever heard over an amount that is a tiny fraction of the deficit (the difference between what we take in and what we are committed to spending) then how are they ever going to deal with the REAL number to get the country back on a fiscal even keel? The reality is that the country, especially the liberal side of it, has for years wanted the country to provide for it things they have also been unwilling to pay for. They want someone else to pay for it, but oh, they deserve it anyway. I’m sorry, breathing is not a reason for support by me or the government. One of the freedoms that made us great and provided serious motivation for productivity was the “Freedom to Fail.” We allowed people to fail and either learn from that or go sit on their rock in mindless contemplation and starve. It was their choice and they had a right to make it and accept the consequences. We need to return to that ethic. Without the Freedom to Fail the other freedoms will soon be seen as detrimental to the protected society and done away with.
The country and the citizens, to be fiscally sound, have a very simple choice to make: do they (a) deliver only the services that the people are willing to pay for and stop there or (b) can they talk the people into actually paying for the services they want? In the end, to be fiscally sound one or the other action has to take place. THe government has only one source of income: you the people. It does absolutely nothing of a productive nature to earn any money on its own and has to rely on the tribute needed by confiscating some of what YOU have earned. It has no magical money tree, no hidden treasure vaults, and unlike the european Kingdoms of old, has no “new world” of its own that it can plunder for its riches. Just us.
We cannot forever try to make up the deficit by borrowing more money and thereby increasing the debt. Why is that not obvious to every one who has ever tried to make ends meet as a family? When you get overextended sometimes you have to eat hamburger not steak, sometimes it is chicken not beef (I’m not ignoring vegans I just have so little in common with them i do not know a workable metaphor for them). Sometimes you keep the old car and wait for the new one until you can afford it. But those people living off of other people’s money via government handouts have no clue about such things nor are they willing to have to substitute chicken for the beef for which they have become accustomed. And neither do the professional politicians against which Franklin and Jefferson warned us back at the start because they can make rules for themselves that are very different from the rules they make for us.
They are like those of my colleagues in academia who have had no real experience trying to make a living outside of the protected fantasy arena of education and simply want the government to give them more money so they can continue doing the only thing they know how to do despite the stunning facts surrounding the failure of the entire educational system in this country. In the real world many of them would have been fired long ago. Now protected by the equivalent of the Prince of Darkness, they simply whine, with the others, that “they” need to come up with more money. They are like a caged monkey with its pathetic hand out for some peanuts because it can no longer forage for itself. Now THAT is greed: the desire for economic protection totally divorced from the individual’s contribution to that pot from which the protection comes.
I just did my taxes. I am a college professor. I made less this year than last and paid more taxes for it. What? I had a third more income than national average and paid twice the average in taxes. And then I hear the idiot congress woman complain about the shut down saying she couldn’t afford it… on her $200 K plus per year and pension for life she was, she asserted, “…living paycheck to paycheck just like everyone else.” Her salary is over three times what I make living here in one of the higher cost of living areas of the country. Ask me how much sympathy I have for her. Everyone else? Please, does this not tell you how out of touch they are?
A dear friend recently tried to tell me our problem was all greed. I agree but I think she is looking at the wrong segment of society. I do not think it is greedy to want to keep the money you have worked for with either your muscles or intelligence. But I do think it is greedy for someone to want that productive person to then carry them because they won’t put in the same effort. Before you misinterpret that let me quickly assert that I think if someone has been blindsided by life, e.g. health has failed them, something out of their control and that did not in any way flow from a choice they made has devastated them, then yes, to the extent we can, we should try to help them get back on their feet. but the operative concept is to “help” them not to simply carry them and facilitate their never getting back into society in a productive way.
That paltry $30+ billion finally agreed to be cut by congress was all in so-called “discretionary” budgets. Well I think entitlements are discretionary too. We CHOOSE to help people when we can afford it; but when we cannot… we cannot. Except for professional idiots like Michel Moore what does “no money” mean to you? What does the math that you are taking in far less than you are paying out mean to you except that you have to borrow more and more money? Why does not Moore, whose brain is a thick as his girth, not get that? In preparation for government shut down that never happened we heard that “Non-Essential” people would be laid off. Wait a minute… why should we the people pay for a single person that is non-essential and why would a government of, by, and for the people have them in the first place?
Now I’m not here to let corporate greed escape condemnation too. Like the handout crowd at the trough, they are doing what the system allows and I think it needs to be tightened on BOTH ends of the spectrum. Having GE pay no taxes is incredible but it is, under current law legal. just like giving full protection and economic deals to illegal immigrants. The problem is that in congress we have each end of the economic spectrum represented but not the country as a whole.
I do not think this congress has the stomach for the fight ahead and the few that do, that actually listened to the people in the last election; are so in the minority they will not have that much power anyway. i expect to see the most insidious and scandalously false accusations of those trying to rein in the impending doom as simply wanting to kill women, children, minorities, endangered species, the planet, and God knows what all. But here is the truth of it. Only this country can protect those things, only this country has the potential power and might to do it. But not if we are broke. We cannot help others if we are crippled ourselves. in order to regain that position where we can help others we have to make ourselves healthy again and that means a period when we have to withdraw from world policeman status, and seriously tighten our own belts.
I will be asked to pay more taxes to help. I refuse until I can see that all of the extra money being asked of me is NOT going to simply be used to pay for more entitlements, more warm and fuzzy programs, and more funds to prop up and facilitate tin-horn tyrants around the world. Show me that we can cut the real waste, like all — ALL — of those non-essential people and all — ALL — of the duplicated programs and services, then and then only come and see if I am willing to kick in a little more if it is needed.
N. DAVID KING's BLOG 