mirror of
https://github.com/nhammer514/textfiles-politics.git
synced 2024-10-01 01:15:38 -04:00
57 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
57 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
How to Solve the Deficit and Debt Problems in One Easy Lesson
|
|
|
|
In 1980, our total national debt, accumulated by ALL "tax and spend"
|
|
Democrats and ALL "borrow and squander" Republicans in 200 years,
|
|
stood at something like $ 0.7 Trillion. Today, only a dozen years
|
|
later, total debt stands at more than $ 4 Trillion and it is
|
|
increasing at the rate of another $ Trillion every three years or so.
|
|
Even if President Clinton achieves what he is trying to do, the debt
|
|
will climb to $ 5 to 6 Trillion before the deficit is eliminated. And
|
|
there is another Trillion, hidden in our shift from biggest creditor
|
|
to biggest debtor. And there may be yet another Trillion, if the
|
|
rumored commercial bank and insurance scandals materialize. What a
|
|
nightmare!
|
|
|
|
There is no way to give an analogy to our situation in the realm of
|
|
personal finance, but let's try anyway. Suppose that your salary is $
|
|
60,000 and you live in a $ 200,000 house, on which you owe $ 10,500.
|
|
One fine day, you find that your pay has been cut to $ 50,000. So, to
|
|
cheer yourself up, you double what you have been spending on your
|
|
favorite hobby, to $ 1,000 per month, and you start making monthly
|
|
trips to the bank to increase your mortgage by $ 1,000 --- to keep the
|
|
bill collectors at bay. After some years, your salary is only
|
|
$ 48,000, but you now owe $ 60,000 and you are still going to the bank
|
|
every month to borrow another $ 1,000. You haven't been able to
|
|
maintain your house properly, so it is now worth only $ 120,000. Your
|
|
banker is getting nervous and thinking of foreclosing. What are your
|
|
options? Wouldn't it be absurd to speak of ``solving" this problem by
|
|
trying to stop borrowing $1,000 more every month, within 4 or 5 years?
|
|
Realistically, your only options are to declare bankruptcy or sell the
|
|
house.
|
|
|
|
What happened to all the Trillions, that Reagan and Bush borrowed and
|
|
squandered? This money still exists in the form of T-Notes. Guys like
|
|
you and me now owe it and those who have the T-Notes now own it. Thus,
|
|
the practical result of Reagan-Bush economic policy was to effect the
|
|
by-far greatest transfer of wealth in history. This is what Reagan set
|
|
out to do, according to his first Budget Director Robert Stockman, but
|
|
he also hoped that the resulting debt would end social programs
|
|
forever. Nice fellow. Great Good Fortune was supposed to "trickle
|
|
down" to you and me, but it didn't.
|
|
|
|
The experiment failed, so why don't we just undo it? The deficit is
|
|
just the amount by which taxes were reduced in 1981 and 1986, so that
|
|
can be fixed by just restoring 1980 tax schedule. The debt can also be
|
|
fixed, by just transferring the $ 3 or 4 Trillion, from those who
|
|
received it back to those from whom it was taken (stolen??). All we
|
|
have to do is cancel the T-Notes.
|
|
|
|
"You can't do that," everybody will scream, "T-Notes are a contractual
|
|
obligation that cannot be abrogated". Well, our Social Security
|
|
Pensions are also a contractual obligation that cannot be abrogated.
|
|
But that hasn't stopped politicians from calling them "entitlements"
|
|
and "putting them on the table". And these same politicians speak of
|
|
"fairly shared sacrifice". Cancelling the T-Notes IS fairly shared
|
|
sacrifice: T-Notes also figure in the pension funds of ordinary
|
|
people.
|