But How Are We Going To Pay For It?

Increasingly one hears conservatives, fundamentalists, and various shades of far right-wing and other racist politicians complaining that our government is spending too much money, which we are getting from borrowing. They have begun to demand that the political party which is currently in power come up with a plan to balance the budget. These guys obviously didn't take enough Economics in college, and they don't realize how essential it is for the government to run large deficits during economic downturns.

It is worth noting that these same corrupt, ignorant red-necks said nothing when the Republicans were bankrupting the country. Both Ronald Reagan and George Bush Jr. reduced taxes on the wealthy at the same time they were increasing spending on the military and on fighting unnecessary wars. The last time the country had a balanced budget was under the Democrats, i.e. Bill Clinton. This is mostly a game that the right wing is playing. They are trying to harm Barack Obama and the well educated, progressive Democrats; thus improving conditions for the Republicans and their fellow traveler wealthy racist buddies.

But the concept of spending no more than you earn is absolutely correct. We do indeed need to cancel the Bush tax cuts for the super-wealthy. It is likely that it may even be necessary for us to increase some other taxes on our most prosperous (greedy?) citizens. At the same time it will be vital that we find logical ways to reduce government spending. The obvious candidates for budget cutting are the intelligence community and the out-of -control military spending.

America has been behaving like many empires at the end. We have been spending vast amount of money on foreign military expeditions, just to keep up our self image of us being the roughest, toughest guys on the block. This is a sort of "keep up with the Joneses" thing, even though no other country comes close to spending what we do on warfare and killing. Lots of empires which are undergoing death throes do this.

As long as our elected officials keep refusing to consider the idea of raising taxes on the rich, at the same time that they are refusing to consider the idea of reducing military-defense-intelligence expenditures by at least 20% to 25%, America will continue to head down the road to self destruction.

Much like the idea of continuing to pump vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and thus causing global warming, the day will come when America has clearly passed the point of no return. We probably won't even realize it at the time. Our system of government may have already become so unworkable that it is inevitable. We may already have already passed the point where tax increases on the rich combined with spending decreases on the military will have the desired effect.

.
.
.
.