Some of the most important lessons are also the hardest lessons. We start with some relatively simple ones, often at an early age, and then progress to the more complicated stuff later. But each lesson taken and passed is generally learned through some pain or embarrassment.
At some point when we were little kids, we got an allowance from our parents. It wasn’t a massive fortune, something like a buck each week, but it was free money and it showed up every week unless we broke some of the more important rules. And we could spend it on pretty much whatever we wanted. So some candy was purchased, or a coke or two, but we also had to remember to save up some of it for buying birthday and Christmas presents, for with wealth came added responsibility.
We knew other kids who got bigger allowances, and on the surface that didn’t seem fair. But when it was patiently pointed out to us that those kids were expected to shop for their own clothes and a few other things that our parents covered for us, we didn’t have a leg to stand on. My brother would have taken that deal, because he was no fan of the clothes Mom bought for us, being a style conscious individual and all. But not me…I hated to shop for clothes in those days, and come to think of it, I still do.
We were told that if we wanted more money, there was always the option of getting a job. In fact, Mom called around and found jobs for us, which we didn’t even have to volunteer for, cause she kinda suggested we just shut up and go to work. My first job paid 60 cents an hour, which simplified my record keeping. Wow, a whole penny a minute. And this was tax free in those days. I had more money than I possibly needed, being a man of simple needs in those days.
But then I entered high school and my needs expanded. Fortunately, I found a better paying job, and with 75 cents an hour I kept up with my needs. After high school I did much better, 90 cents an hour, but that next job was with a real business, and thus I learned about payroll taxes. And since I was now buying more expensive stuff, and gasoline, I found out about sales and fuel taxes. Suddenly, I learned a new lesson as my comfortable living was slimmed a bit by the take from the government.
With college came rent and food expense, along with books, and more darn clothes. I learned to stretch a paycheck for a month, and how to turn in those empty bottles for the deposit when the month lasted longer than I planned. It’s a hard lesson when you run out of money. And I had to smile when a friend’s kid looked at her mom with that perfect child innocence, and asked, when their month outlived the money, why couldn’t they just cash a check so they could get a pizza. Ah, the pain and embarrassment of an empty bank account. That was a hard lesson.
The laugh came when someone had to explain to one friend why she couldn’t keep writing checks that bounced. Seems she couldn’t understand that just because she had checks left in the checkbook, that didn’t mean she still had money in her account. The threat of legal consequences induced her to figure that one out. That was a painful lesson.
I was always motivated to work harder, in school so I could later make more money in my job, and at the job itself, so I could make more money at my job, so that I could buy all I needed and then some. I did reach a point where I could no longer limitlessly expand my income, for such is reality, and thus I do not own a Ferrari or even that 18000 square foot ranch house in Jackson Hole. But I get by if I match what I make with what I owe. And I still save up for those birthday and Christmas presents, and other silly things, like my retirement.
Now, I know that there are subtle differences between my need to balance a household budget, and the federal government’s teensy problem with its overspending. The experts from the government tell us that governments don’t actually need to balance their budgets. Heck, governments apparently don’t even have to pay off their debts at all, cause they get to make their own rules. Governments are unimpaired by that responsibility stuff that the subjects of said government still must obey.
Governments are allowed a printing press, but they will throw our butts in jail if we were to try that trick. Governments will deliberately create inflation, so that when their bills come due, they can pay some of them with increasingly worthless money, and thus make it look less egregious. And except for all those governments that have been overthrown by their own people, or simply folded because they didn’t or couldn’t pay their bills, I suppose nothing bad ever comes of this.
So I’m not sure what all the fuss is about in Washington these days. The problem can be fixed, but it won’t be. Heck, go ahead and raise the debt ceiling. Raise it next month too. Why stop here? Keep raising it forever. Why argue over whether revenue needs to go up to match spending, or spending go down to match revenue? Nobody has tried to make this equation work in a very long time.
Trying to Increase revenue won’t net much anyway, for the cow is pretty much milked out already. The middle class has little more to give. Same with small business. Sure, you could go for a value added tax so you can clean out the lower class folks too, but that will just annoy them. Low income voters tend to favor politicians who want to tax those other people in order to give an allowance to them, so having a big tax laid on them won’t sit well.
Tax the rich until everybody is equal sounds fair to some, but pretty soon you run out of rich people. And that will just make rich folks even more interested in taking charge of the whole mess, which we don’t need. Besides, we are in so deep that if you took every cent from the “rich” it wouldn’t put a dent in the current deficit.
If I ran out of money I’d have to cut back on spending, because I cannot expand my earning in an unlimited way. This is true in government too, eventually. No choice in the matter. But asking a politician to do something painful but necessary to reduce spending only nets you promises and lies. And if you take away from folks the “free” things that flow down to them from the government, those ingrates will stop voting politicians into office for life. Doing what’s right never got a politician re-elected when so many who might vote want him to keep dishing it out.
Folks who like free money, and politicians who care far less about the country than they do about getting re-elected, will block any attempt to rein in things. We haven’t learned. And we won’t.
If you or I wrote rubber checks like this country of our does on a routine basis, we’d get locked up as crazy or crooked. What does that say about our politicians?
This great country is headed to the trash bin because it spends beyond its means. This is not an if, but merely a when. We are finished as a viable nation because of this corruption, if we do not learn the lesson from this painful experience. What a shame.
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