From today's Journal:
Gosh, do you think so?
In my household we prefer to judge whether we can perpetually finance the levels of debt we're carrying before dropping a massive sum of cash on something. We actually have a name for the process ("budget") and we rather quaintly think of it as "deciding whether we can afford it." Though admittedly it's swell if you can get in the drunken orgy of spending first, and then can forcibly extort enough to pay for it by threat of force like the government does, without you yourself going to jail for this, which most of us who aren't high-level donkey cabinet appointees can't pull off.
This is shrewd, if a bit obvious, in a Sun Tzu kind of way. After all, the senate hasn't yet completed its formality of voting on the bill no one has had time to read, and it's not been signed into law yet, so scheduling a "fiscal responsibility summit" to address what is now referred to as a "debt crisis" before he's even finished inking the monstrosity of a law that causes the debt crisis takes a special type of chutzpah, and frankly I'm envious because I'd never be able to say any of that with a straight face. The bit of referring to the resultant debt as a "crisis" is especially rich for anyone with enough imagination to anticipate the forthcoming "emergency" legislation to raise taxes (presumably only on 49% of us)which will be so crucially urgent to the survival of the republic that no one will be permitted time to read or debate the bill before voting on it. I hope they call it something really catchy because the clever focus-tested name of the law is usually the only enjoyment I get from these things.
But anyone who believed that any of this cool new cash giveaway was temporary and that eventually, after the economy is saved by Dear Leader, we'd restore fiscal sanity by trimming some of this, ahem, one-time emergency spending rather than raising everyone's taxes to European levels probably was the sort who believed he was the change he had been waiting for, or perhaps is just a member of the 51% of the country who pay no income tax.
Any republican or conservative who found some trancendental nonsense reason to vote for Dear Leader back in November, you've by now been slapped upside the head with the cold tuna of reality. Let me be the first to say, welcome back, and thanks again for your thoughtful vote.
It did finally dawn on me this week what's really going on with all this, in a macro sense. It's been pretty clear for years that a large slice of our fair republic embraced the part of the American dream that involved owning large houses and fancy "luxury" trucks and multiple plasma TVs and whatnot, and a large slice of that group simply discarded as the "failed policies of the past" the notion that one's ability to actually pay for those things was more than tangentially related to the act of acquiring them. And now, when we as a society have maxed out our credit cards and borrowed every cent of equity from our houses and had a losing streak at the racetrack, we no longer recognize the need to stop. We simply band together under the belief that all of our shitty credit scores amalgamated into a single giant US Treasury Mastercard can allow the lifestyle to continue, at least until that stops working and the Chinese decide that they'd rather invest their billions in fireworks or something instead of worthless junk bonds issued with the full faith and credit of a government long ago bankrupted by 51% of its own people, and by then all this will generally be someone else's problem anyway.
And the best part of it is, if you're one of those who think this is a good idea, there's at least a 51% chance that you won't ever have to pay for it either. Shazam!, and congratulations. Really, for that 51%, all this is a smart play; they have little to lose in the short term and will be hurt relatively less than the rest of us in the long term, so why not?
Not to say that we're totally fucked or anything.
Obama to Shift Focus to Budget Deficit
By JONATHAN WEISMAN
With a $787 billion stimulus package in hand, President Barack Obama will pivot quickly to address a budget deficit that could now approach $2 trillion this year.
He has scheduled a "fiscal-responsibility summit" on Feb. 23 and will unveil a budget blueprint three days later, crafted to put pressure on politicians to address the country's surging long-term debt crisis.
Speaking Friday to business leaders at the White House, the president defended the surge of spending in the stimulus plan, but he made sure to add: "It's important for us to think in the midterm and long term. And over that midterm and long term, we're going to have to have fiscal discipline. We are not going to be able to perpetually finance the levels of debt that the federal government is currently carrying."
Gosh, do you think so?
In my household we prefer to judge whether we can perpetually finance the levels of debt we're carrying before dropping a massive sum of cash on something. We actually have a name for the process ("budget") and we rather quaintly think of it as "deciding whether we can afford it." Though admittedly it's swell if you can get in the drunken orgy of spending first, and then can forcibly extort enough to pay for it by threat of force like the government does, without you yourself going to jail for this, which most of us who aren't high-level donkey cabinet appointees can't pull off.
This is shrewd, if a bit obvious, in a Sun Tzu kind of way. After all, the senate hasn't yet completed its formality of voting on the bill no one has had time to read, and it's not been signed into law yet, so scheduling a "fiscal responsibility summit" to address what is now referred to as a "debt crisis" before he's even finished inking the monstrosity of a law that causes the debt crisis takes a special type of chutzpah, and frankly I'm envious because I'd never be able to say any of that with a straight face. The bit of referring to the resultant debt as a "crisis" is especially rich for anyone with enough imagination to anticipate the forthcoming "emergency" legislation to raise taxes (presumably only on 49% of us)which will be so crucially urgent to the survival of the republic that no one will be permitted time to read or debate the bill before voting on it. I hope they call it something really catchy because the clever focus-tested name of the law is usually the only enjoyment I get from these things.
But anyone who believed that any of this cool new cash giveaway was temporary and that eventually, after the economy is saved by Dear Leader, we'd restore fiscal sanity by trimming some of this, ahem, one-time emergency spending rather than raising everyone's taxes to European levels probably was the sort who believed he was the change he had been waiting for, or perhaps is just a member of the 51% of the country who pay no income tax.
Any republican or conservative who found some trancendental nonsense reason to vote for Dear Leader back in November, you've by now been slapped upside the head with the cold tuna of reality. Let me be the first to say, welcome back, and thanks again for your thoughtful vote.
It did finally dawn on me this week what's really going on with all this, in a macro sense. It's been pretty clear for years that a large slice of our fair republic embraced the part of the American dream that involved owning large houses and fancy "luxury" trucks and multiple plasma TVs and whatnot, and a large slice of that group simply discarded as the "failed policies of the past" the notion that one's ability to actually pay for those things was more than tangentially related to the act of acquiring them. And now, when we as a society have maxed out our credit cards and borrowed every cent of equity from our houses and had a losing streak at the racetrack, we no longer recognize the need to stop. We simply band together under the belief that all of our shitty credit scores amalgamated into a single giant US Treasury Mastercard can allow the lifestyle to continue, at least until that stops working and the Chinese decide that they'd rather invest their billions in fireworks or something instead of worthless junk bonds issued with the full faith and credit of a government long ago bankrupted by 51% of its own people, and by then all this will generally be someone else's problem anyway.
And the best part of it is, if you're one of those who think this is a good idea, there's at least a 51% chance that you won't ever have to pay for it either. Shazam!, and congratulations. Really, for that 51%, all this is a smart play; they have little to lose in the short term and will be hurt relatively less than the rest of us in the long term, so why not?
Not to say that we're totally fucked or anything.
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