A recent post over at Obsidian Wings reminds me of a story from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the series of books, not the movie).
In the story, a race was facing an energy crisis (which we are facing also, but that's beside the point). Their solution to the problem was a fantastic piece of technology that would steal energy from themselves in the past, where, as they recalled, there was always tons of energy floating around unused. This seemed like a great idea, but it also seemed that no matter how they tried, they could never get all the energy they wanted. Finally they discovered those bastards in the future were doing the same thing to them.
When our government spends more than we pay in taxes, we are essentially passing that bill on to be paid later. It's the story above in reverse. We steal money from the future. We're sticking our children with a much larger problem than they'd otherwise face, and we really ought to know better because we are those children. That's how long this has been happening.
Will we give to our children the same problems our parents gave to us?
1 comment:
I'll readily concede that it is a massive problem, but I hanve't yet thought of a practical solution. Pretty much every gov't program, once created, cannot be removed, and entitlement-style programs are an ever-increasing percentage of the budget as well. Plus, add in the usual Washington-speak, in which an increase of 5% (instead of the asked for 8%) is a "cut", and you can begin to see that the problem is a true Gordion knot.
Raising taxes would be a possible answer (though it would not increase revenues as much as some seem to think), but ask yourself, honestly - if the gov't took in twice as much in taxes next year, do you really believe that they would pay down the debt in any meaningful way?
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