Mail 683 Thursday, July 14, 2011
The Dance continues:
Deficit Dance
Dear Jerry –
Your essay in the view section today was fun to read, but really, the Democrats are being stubborn?
Well, yes, of course they are.
Almost as stubborn as the Republicans who are unwilling to compromise even a teeny weeny bit, unless it is overwhelmingly to their advantage and overwhelmingly harmful to their "enemies."
Obama is not lying, the SS checks will be held up before they stop paying debt services to the banks. It happened before, over a paltry 120m mistake in what, 1979 or thereabouts?
All this is dancing about is not really about the deficit, but about looking better than the other party in the upcoming election. Nothing more or less to it I think. No big moral, ethical, or philosophical stance. Just "don’t do anything that hurts our chances in the next election."
I do predict a surprise, where the people get disgusted with all the beggers not doing their jobs up in D.C. It would not surprise me to see a serious campaign evolve to throw them all out of office. Republican and Democrat alike.
-Paul
All of which illustrates the problem nicely. The problem is that there is no off switch. There is no way to turn off Bunny Inspectors, Head Start, Americans with Disabilities Act, extreme environmental regulations, scale Medicare and Medicaid back to pre-2000 levels, and start a spiral back toward more economic freedom and less central command economics. Taxes will increase. It won’t matter what the latest increase is in theory “for”, it will go to make the share of government allocation of resources higher and the degree of economic freedom lower. More taxes is a higher command economy.
We all survived back in the last Century. We have foolishly undertaken a number of debts since that time and they have to be paid, meaning that we ought to be cutting back on entitlements instead of insisting that they are no longer discretionary. But all that requires hard choices, and neither party wants to do that. Easier to dance and continue the Kabuki play, and go on raising spending and raising taxes and street demonstration, until we are indistinguishable from Greece.
At one time it was possible for young people to work their way through college. I did. I had the Korean War GI Bill to help. Roberta simply worked her way through college. No debts at the end. Now that’s possible only for those from fairly wealthy families. All the rest start in bondage to the government – the sole source of student loans – and the rises in tuition continue. The Academy, professors, administrators, janitors, police, secretaries, deans, technicians, gardeners, all must be paid, and there can be no thought of reducing any of that. Those are not discretionary.
The people tried last year to reverse this. The result is kabuki dance. At no point is there any serious discussion of saying stop, enough, the government must become smaller. Even 2% smaller. Just cut back by 2%. Stop growing, Reverse the trend. But I do not see it happening. There is not enough income. We can only cut discretionary expenses, and none of the entitlements are discretionary. And the Dance goes on.
If something cannot go on forever it will stop. But there is still some money left to be confiscated. We hasten to add that to the government maw. Feed the beast. The Dance will continue.
Turning the rascals out is an old American tradition. Perhaps it is not yet dead.
