There are many ways to kill a nation, but sinking into hopeless debt is one of the most certain. Unfortunately, like an irresponsible spendthrift, the U.S. is rapidly embracing this path to ruination. Between 2000 and 2009, our national debt soared from $5.7 trillion to, as of April 12, 2010, $12. 8 trillion (DefeattheDebt.com), and this before budget-busting Obamacare kicks in. Moreover, this statistic ignores state and city debt that is similarly expanding at record levels. Also excluded are the humongous future debts – perhaps trillions – that will be incurred by Social Security pay-outs. A Pew Study finds a $1 trillion shortfall in 2008 between what states owe in pensions and what is now set aside. According to the Congressional Budget Office, by 2020 our nation’s debt will be equal to 90 percent of our gross domestic productand mainly Chinese owned (Irwin Stelzer, “Small Bras and the Value-Added Tax, WSJ, April 5, 2010, A19). This is an historic – one might add, embarrassing – liability level arriving when the US is not waging a two-front war or selling bonds to feed the hungry.
Owing money per se is not the culprit. Alexander Hamilton correctly asserted that some debt promotes national prosperity. Rapacious Third World level appetites are the culprit; the difference between prudent economic investment versus the national equivalents of borrowing for vacation homes and snowmobiles. One need not be a CPA to realize that this profligacy cannot continue forever. Just ask Greece. Eventually, nervous Chinese bankers will invest elsewhere and a bankrupt Washington will just debase the currency by printing worthless greenbacks. To anticipate the future, consider California and Illinois where state employees work fewer hours due to their state’s inability to meet payroll. Stories from the April 9, 2010 Wall Street Journal matter-of-factlyrecounted how Los Angeles was considering closing city offices two days a week, how Colorado Springs was funding parks via bake sales, while California, New Jersey, Virginia and Connecticut were thinking about deferring payments to state pension funds. And this will only get worse unless drastic action is taken.
The roots of this addiction are psychological, not financial need. Certain barely noticed policies facilitate seemingly “rational” cravings for unaffordable government-supplied benefits. Irresponsibility begins when, thanks to increasingly progressive taxation policy, millions come to believe that government largess is “free.” This delusion was made clear to me years ago when Chris Matthews interviewed the Rev. Al Sharpton about slavery reparations. Matthews asked Sharpton why today’s guiltless whites should pay reparations. Sharpton, a tax deadbeat, quickly shot back, “People won’t pay. The government will.” Eureka! In other words, “the government” existed apart from taxpayers and if “the government” could be pressed to pay, it would be “free.”
This “free” becomes comprehensible if one examines the relationship between many Americans and the taxman – for millions he barely exists. A recent Tax Policy Center report showed that in 2009, 49 percent of all taxpayers will pay no federal tax. The true proportion of freeloaders is probably much larger since many people work off-the-books or under-report income given scant likelihood of an audit. Others rent versus owning and therefore are unmindful of indirect property taxes. Perhaps the only in-your-face tax is the sales tax, and even here much of it is hidden as in the gasoline and cigarette taxes. This weakness for “free” benefits is hardly surprising given how millions of Americans are daily seduced by “too good to be true” schemes.
With the prospect of “free” government, it makes perfect sense to indulge appetites for electronic toys, cable TV, and weekly beauty treatments and have “Uncle Sam” pay for national defense, rebuilding the infrastructure, education, police and fire protection, subsidized housing and, more recently, health care. Why forgo a cell phone upgrade so as to pay taxes for “nothing”? No wonder office-seekers promise endless “free” benefits; voters never receive the bills. Especially in poorer areas, candidates vie for the title, Mr. Santa Claus.
Now, thanks to decades of convincing the poor that political activism is both an honored duty and their salvation, if something is unobtainable personally, demand that government “freely” supply it. It is a stampede to the public trough. Can’t read or write, hold boisterous rallies and command Washington to put knowledge into brains by wildly spending yet more on star teachers, spiffier textbooks, country club-like schools and all else that an omnipotent government free of financial constraints can supply. Feeling a little sick but broke due to over-spending on designer jeans? No problem. Organize a demonstration for government supplied healthcare. Government now outshines MasterCard: you cannot be turned down, and as far as you can see, the monthly bill never arrives. Put bluntly, modern government is infantilizing its citizens under the guise of improving their lives.
The incredible irony is that runaway public debt helped create the Constitution. The Founders personally witnessed this prosperity-destroying evil. All recalled the Revolution when the Continental Congress issued millions in script redeemable when things got better. This indebtedness soon sold for pennies on the dollar and rendered governing all but impossible. Fortunately Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton insisted that the government created under the Constitution redeem the script dollar-on-the-dollar. But the lesson was clear and should be etched in stone: doom awaits those who go deep into debt and cannot pay. One can only imagine if Alexander Hamilton returning and informed that Congress was borrowing to rescue financially imprudent home owners.
Indeed, it was an armed insurrection by over-extended farmers – Shays’ Rebellion in 1786/7 – that instigated the national convention that wrote the Constitution. Here a band of Massachusetts farmers attempted to escape crushing debt by forcefully preventing courts from seizing their mortgaged property. The insurrection was quelled but since such insolvency was commonplace, it sent shock waves through the colonies. The need for a strong central government to restrain proliferating indebtedness was indisputable.
Many solutions have been proposed to cure this worsening addiction, but nothing on the menu will reform the drunk. A Constitutional amendment inhibiting spending begins with a two-thirds vote in both houses, the same houses that keep piling it on. A recently floated solution popular in high-tax Europe is a national Value Added Tax (VAT). This is a sales tax at every point of production whose main allure is its stealthy quality since the tax portion of the price is seldom explicit – $25,000 cars overnight become $30,000 cars. But, as we mentioned, it is this very invisibility that stimulates appetites for “free” government goodies.
A precise solution is unclear but one key ingredient is vital: pain, the inevitable discomfort brought by immoderate consumption, whether from over-eating, getting drunk or buying an unaffordable house. This is Nature’s way of saying, “Don’t do it again.” Why not a national yearly “no exception” levy of $2,000 on every adult? And payable in one lump sum! If the debt declines, so does the levy though, of course, this would increase if the debt rose. Can’t tote the note? No problem. Just as paupers once chopped wood for town use, we’ll institute national service where non-payers can settle their obligation by picking up trash, washing government cars and otherwise personally feel the pain of fiscal irresponsibility. Dodgers will be caught and coerced to toil publicly while wearing day-glo orange jump suits. Hopefully, a new breed of office-seeker will emerge – the debt buster. Read my lips: no more orange jump suits! And if all goes well, these conscripted trash pickers will just say no, please , please no the next time some “compassionate” public official” proposes a “free” entitlement.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Robert Weissberg is emeritus professor of political science, University of Illinois-Urbana and currently an adjunct instructor at New York UniversityDepartment of Politics (graduate). He has written many books, the most recent include The Limits of Civic Activism, Pernicious Tolerance: How teaching to "accept differences" undermines civil society and the forthcoming, Bad Students, Not Bad Schools: How both the Right and the Left have American education wrong (early 2010). Besides writing for professional journals, he has also written for magazines like the Weekly Standard and currently contributes to various blogs.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Robert Weissberg is emeritus professor of political science, University of Illinois-Urbana and currently an adjunct instructor at New York University Department of Politics (graduate). He has written many books, the most recent being: The Limits of Civic Activism, Pernicious Tolerance: How teaching to "accept differences" undermines civil society andBad Students, Not Bad Schools. Besides writing for professional journals, he has also written for magazines like the Weekly Standard and currently contributes to various blogs.
Here is an LRAD. It’s a Long Range Acoustic Device better known as a sound cannon and it’s used to disperse unruly crowds. Here is an Occupy Chicago freakout over the LRAD (led by the same livestreamer who freaked out last night over a brief police stop): Two #LRAD s spotted heading to march.— Tim [...]
The crockumentary film-maker should have read Twitchy first. As we told you Saturday night, the trio of Occupy Chicago livestreamers who freaked out over a brief, Chicago police pullover didn’t have their apartment raided, didn’t have any of their equipment damaged, were not “held at gunpoint,” and had none of their high-priced cameras, phones, and [...]
Mother Nature is Chicago law enforcement’s best friend. Tonight, the rabble-rousers’ plans for anarchy got spoiled by rain. Twitter had fun as the Occupiers and their fearless livestream crews ran for cover, while a few of the mobsters hung around to harass officers on duty and break out in senseless chants: Fkin Streamers afraid of [...]
In what reads like a bad Hollywood movie script Marion Barry has changed his mind about Filipino nurses. Just a few weeks after complaining about how many Filipino nurses work in Washington DC Barry's life was saved by Filipino nurses. That's right, the same people he wanted to push our of DC hospitals ended up treating his potentially life threatening blood clot.
Violence erupts at the end of the NATO Summit protests. Earlier today, members of Black Bloc were arrested for plotting to attack police stations, Mayor Emanuel's home and President Obama's campaign headquarters. Their violence then turned to the protest; police in riot gear move in, wearing gas masks. Protesters are throwing things at police according to video, live photos and reports from on the ground in Chicago.
blog comments powered by Disqus