Everybody wants an “A” but nobody wants to study.
Everybody wants to be rich but nobody wants
to save.
Everybody wants to lose weight
but nobody wants to exercise.
Everybody
wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.
No matter how you say it, the desire for something without the
willingness to do the hard things required to achieve it, will always lead to
disappointment.
This is the cadence of
the conundrum, the drumbeat of the do-nothing dreamer, the national anthem of
the nihilist; the perennial I want but I will not work formula for
failure.
The signature phrase for the conservatives of this
generation of Americans should be, “We all want a sound economy but we aren’t
willing to endure the life-style changes it would take to get there.”
Case in point: the coming
Fiscal
Cliff, the looming disaster of sequestration that every talking head on
every network blathers about endlessly, “It will happen” “It won’t
happen.”
Pick a side and it will be
argued back and forth hour after hour, “The President won’t let it happen, “The
President wants it to happen.” Over and over we are barraged by the same few
people who constitute the pundocracy of
America debate what will
happen.
There is only one thing they are
all agreed upon.
If we go over this
cliff, created by a vote of Congress and a signature by the President it will
be terrible for our country.
Why stop
there? It will be terrible for the entire world.
Just think, if we Americans raise our taxes and reign in our
drunken sailor spending binge it will be a disaster for us and for everyone who
draws breath on this planet. Not to worry we, the poor unwashed in fly-over
country, don’t have to scratch our pumpkin heads and wonder why it would be a
disaster if our country took the steps necessary to save our economy the
network appointed chatter chiefs are quick to tell us.
One side says raising taxes on anyone in a weak economy may
push us over into a recession. This of
course comes from the people who evidently don’t buy their own bread, pump
their own gas, or know any of the millions who are now permanently out of work,
in other words personally prosperous people who believe the Great Recession
actually ended. The other side says
raising taxes on anyone they don’t consider rich would be a disaster.
Both sides agree that at least half of the spending cuts
would be a disaster. One side points at
defense spending as a surrender of national security. While the other side points at cuts in
entitlements as throwing grandma off the cliff.
The answers they propose are as predictable as a Hallmark
Christmas movie. The Progressive
Democrats say raise the taxes on the evil rich and cut spending to the defense
department. The Progressive Republicans
say raise revenues by closing loop holes and cut spending on entitlements. The problem with this is that just like
Representative Paul Ryan’s draconian budget it still never gets us to a
balanced budget let alone paying down the principle on the National Debt. Both sides favor plans that keep on borrowing
even if it might be at lower levels than at present. Maybe we will only borrow thirty six cents of
every dollar instead of forty six.
Wow! That should really make our
arrival at the ash heap of History a few moments later.
And that is the heart of the problem.
Or as another old saying tells us nobody
wants their own ox gored.
It is the “Not
in my backyard syndrome” applied by everyone to something.
We all want cuts in spending but not in our
spending.
We all agree that wasteful
programs should die but every program has its supporters.
This is where reality takes a bite out of
dreams.
Unless we balance our budget and
reverse the slide into bankruptcy our days as a great power, let alone our days
as the world’s only super power,
are
numbered, and everyone knows China is counting off the numbers.
Looking around in the cloistered world of self-appointed
opinion writers I hate to have to be the one to tell my fellow Americans this
but we have to do the work to get the “A,” save the money to get rich, do the
exercises to lose the weight, and we most assuredly will have to die to go to
heaven.
We, through our elected representatives, have spent like
there was no tomorrow until tomorrow is mortgaged to pay for today without
asking the question, “How are we going to pay for tomorrow?” I guess we have always figured we could use
the day after tomorrow for collateral.
That may work for a while or at least until our children and
grandchildren have been sold into slavery to the highest bidder.
Unfortunately my generation, the Boomers who proudly offered
Bill Clinton and George Bush the Younger as our contribution to the pantheon of
American Presidents, has kicked the can down the road while
paraphrasing
Louis XV on the eve of the French Revolution, “After me the flood.”
Or as many fellow boomers have phrased it to
me, “It won’t crash in my lifetime.”
Now the handwriting is on the wall, the torches and
pitchforks are seen on the horizon, and it is becoming obvious though the end
may not come on
December 21,
2012 it isn’t too far off.
Anyone
who isn’t comatose in the cultural
soma of social media and
the game can see you can’t continue to spend more than you bring in
forever.
The
interest
on the
National Debt is going to eat
us alive. Our creditors won’t keep lending us more and more once they realize
our only answer is to
print
our way out of debt.
Ask any scam
artist trying to live by charging their Visa to the MasterCard when the shop
keepers start cutting up the cards the happy days aren’t here anymore.
What we need to do is go over the fiscal cliff, and instead
of using the ensuing economic contraction as an
opportunity
to re-launch the
United
States in a
fundamentally new
direction tighten our belts.
We have got
to go through a period of austerity to return to reality.
Endlessly printing money always leads to money that isn’t
worth anything. Even if our current
leaders think they have figured out a soft landing for this lead balloon they
haven’t, and when that bubble pops the economy stops.
Our fiscal conservatives who want to return to a gold
standard should tell everyone that doing that will cause a
contraction
in the value of money that will resemble a train going 100 miles an hour
hitting a brick wall.
There just isn’t
enough gold in the world to value every American dollar at one dollar.
A return to gold would give us an economy
based on real money, and that would be a good thing.
However the proponents of this course need to
be honest about the transition from funny money to real money: there will be a
great deal of pain on the way back to reality.
There are plans to do something from the right. There is the
plan to
cut off
Social Security at 55. Everyone younger having paid into the world’s
greatest Ponzi scheme all their lives get another deal.
Even if it is a better deal they will still
feel like they are getting ripped off because they are.
There is also the plan to cut all the
wasteful spending out of Medicare but leave it all over at the Pentagon.
These plans won’t fly because they only have
one wing.
The left has a
plan too.
Raise taxes on the rich, and keep on
spending.
This may eventually pass due
to the President’s perceived strength and the Republican leadership’s
Progressive inclinations and acceptance of defeat but it will only continue our
progress towards national suicide.
The fact is we can either choose to cut the spending, raise
revenues, and save the future or we can continue to stagger like drunken
sailors spending our children’s as yet unearned money until our creditors
pull
in the leash.
I know calling for
higher tax revenues is heresy to most conservatives, and I am not in favor of
the government taking one more cent than necessary for Constitutional
purposes.
Saving the country from ruin
is the ultimate Constitutional purpose.
Like any household that is buried in debt we need more money
and less spending; the trick is getting both.
The slight-of-hand artists in
Washington
are great at striking
Grand
Bargains
for
taxes
now and spending cuts that never materialize.
That never has worked and it certainly won’t
work now.
We could do it without tax
increases.
Without taxes the spending
cuts would have to be much deeper and more painful, and we can’t get anyone to
sign on for the pain of cuts with taxes.
Here’s the secret of raising revenues with taxes.
We can’t raise rates which merely increases
tax avoidance.
A flat tax would bring in
increased revenues by
growing
the economy and would indeed be fair.
In contrast raising rates in a progressive tax system is merely punitive
and is a populist trick to buy the votes of those who earn less.
If we don’t endure the pain now, if we don’t endure the
necessary radical fiscal surgery despite years on life support, decades of
refusing to take our medicine will finally cause our economy, and with it our
dreams of a brighter future, to die.
However, we won’t get to go to heaven.
Instead we will go into debtor’s prison as our beloved nation sinks
beneath mountains of debt into the second or third rank.
We will watch as a tomorrow which could have
been ours
becomes
someone
else’s.
When our children and grandchildren ask us, “Where’s my
inheritance?” we will have to say, “We spent it yesterday.” When they ask, “Where’s our future?” we will
have to say, “We spent that too.”
Instead of being pushed over the cliff, let’s dive over and
then resist any attempt to restore the spending. Let’s take the pain so our children can gain.
