Remember the Balanced Budget amendment?
I recall days when people were concerned that the national debt – many times larger than the recent ‘bailout’ plan – was considered to be a threat to the US economy, and a serious threat to national security (as in, provoke an international war or other costly international aggression).
I recall that there hasn’t been an effective whisper about a Balanced Budget amendment proposal since Democrats won majority in Congress. A Balanced Budget plan means that Congress and the rest of the US Government is prevented from spending more than is taken in as tax revenue. Implied is that in good time – with higher revenues, Congress would pay down the national debt. [Begin sarcastic rant] Something about keeping the economy robust, people employed, food available, etc. Minor stuff, really. Hopefully the language would be tight enough, that Congress would no longer be able raid monies collected for Social Security – thus ‘saving’ Social Security for another 40 years or more. [End sarcastic rant]
But a liberal, Democrat-controlled Congress, won’t contemplate limiting themselves like that. Being honest and responsible with our tax money doesn’t let them buy votes with special interest programs.
What reminded me of this distinction between Obama and McCain was reading a LookingForLissa simple summary . Lissa caught the message “Even I could figure this one out” from the Bookworm Room, who caught today’s Wall Street Journal article “Obama and the Tax Tipping Point – How long before taxpayers are pushed too far? by Adam Lerrick.”
Other nations have tried the ideology of fairness in the place of incentives and found that reward without work is a recipe for decline. …
The sequence is always the same. High-tax, big-spending policies force the economy to lose momentum. Then growth in government spending outstrips revenues. Fiscal and trade deficits soar. Public debt, excessive taxation and unemployment follow. The central bank tries to solve the problem by printing money. International competitiveness is lost and the currency depreciates. The system stagnates. And then a frightened electorate returns conservatives to power.
Adam Lerrick, author of the WSJ article, concludes with:
Our trademark competitive advantage will be lost, and once lost, it will be hard to regain. There are too many emerging economies focused on prosperity and not redistribution for the U.S. to easily recapture its role of global economic leader.
Tomorrow’s children may come to question why their parents sold their birthright for a mess of “fairness” — whatever that will signify when jobs are scarce and American opportunity is no longer the envy of the world.
If you want to read a more light-hearted treatment of what runaway tax-and-spend leads to (disaster novels), try Maureen F. McHugh’s “China Mountain Zhang
“. CMZ is an important science fiction novel for several reasons – exploring concepts in architecture, Chinese social mores, future of competitive sports, survival of the individual in a communist-purchased America. And, oh yeah – the premise is that Communist China buys the US when it goes bankrupt from a bloated national debt.
Another about an economic-driven government meltdown is Generals President
by John Dalmas. David Brin’s “The Postman (Bantam Classics)
” and Gordon R. Dickson’s “Wolf And Iron
” are about survival, but don’t clarify the details of how the meltdown occurs.
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