Suppose you're an average American. You've got rent, student loans, a car loan or two, and some credit cards. You're married, with no children, and your spouse works. You're a DINK (double-income, no kids). You can afford it all, with money to spare for nice things like foreign travel. You're even close to "rich" depending on who's defining that term.
Suppose then that you decide to buy a home (because that's the American Dream) and have a family. You've got great credit! Why not? You take on a mortgage and the expense of caring for the next generation, and in the process reduce your income in exchange for more time with the family. But you're doing the responsible things.
You buy a pool and build a deck and add an extension onto the house, and next thing you know, your credit lines are all maxed out, and the folks that are your creditors are wondering whether you can stay afloat, to say nothing of taking on more.
You're employed, earning good coin, more than able to pay the monthly bills (if you don't spend any more than you must), and more than slightly insulted by the insinuation that maybe you can't pay the bills.
So, if you follow the US government's lead, you:
1) tell your lenders that it's all over in 2 months, you'll default
2) ask said lenders for a credit limit increase
3) blame your last boss for your troubles
Or, you tighten your belt and pay off your debts, even if it takes twenty years...but no one's advocating that answer.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Six Days to Purgatory
Here begins my political blog, as the world as I have known it since attaining adulthood crashes around me. I came of age under Reagan, cast my first and second votes for George H.W. Bush, cheered the Contract With America and the Gingrich revolution of 1994, pulled the lever (hopelessly, but proudly) for Bob Dole in 1996, and gave the current "leader" of the Free World the benefit of the doubt (holding my nose both times).
So, bona fides established. I have stood with the GOP for twenty years.
Yet I am, in fact, a libertarian (more on that to follow). And I will this year, for the first time, cast my ballot for the Libertarian Party candidate for President, Bob Barr.
Yes, my friends, we've come to that.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I did not leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.
But it's clear I was misguided all along. There's not a whit of difference between the major parties, really. Two subtly different versions of the status quo, spending hundreds of millions of dollars every election year to...what? Incrementally change a few things? Push the needle a little left, a little right...to what end?
This nation is so far removed from the ideals upon which it was founded, the ideals that allowed a small, agrarian population remote from the centers of trade and political power to grow into the mighty colossus of opportunity and wealth that we became by the turn of the 21st century, so far removed as to be unidentifiable as the nation that Held These Truths to be Self Evident in 1776.
Were we perfect then? Of course not. What nation was in 1776? We weren't the only nation then with slavery; we weren't the only nation then to fall short of guaranteeing equal rights for all citizens. But a few brave and wise souls put together a Constitution that, in time, has allowed us to strive for that perfection that we did not possess in 1776.
Beginning in 1932, though, it has all come flying apart. While the final march to equal rights as envisioned in our Constitution continued into the tumultuous 1960s, the foundation upon which all our rights are based has been eroded continuously since 1932 (or arguably, 1914 and the passage of the 16th Amendment, but that's a topic again for another day).
"Progressive taxation" (Orwell would be amused that this is the proper term for confiscation of wealth), massive federal government spending on programs never envisioned by the framers of the Constitution, a military twenty times the size necessary to defend our nation, restrictions on individual liberties in direct contravention of the Bill of Rights... Suffice to say, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, et. al., would not recognize the United States of America today.
So, bona fides established. I have stood with the GOP for twenty years.
Yet I am, in fact, a libertarian (more on that to follow). And I will this year, for the first time, cast my ballot for the Libertarian Party candidate for President, Bob Barr.
Yes, my friends, we've come to that.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I did not leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.
But it's clear I was misguided all along. There's not a whit of difference between the major parties, really. Two subtly different versions of the status quo, spending hundreds of millions of dollars every election year to...what? Incrementally change a few things? Push the needle a little left, a little right...to what end?
This nation is so far removed from the ideals upon which it was founded, the ideals that allowed a small, agrarian population remote from the centers of trade and political power to grow into the mighty colossus of opportunity and wealth that we became by the turn of the 21st century, so far removed as to be unidentifiable as the nation that Held These Truths to be Self Evident in 1776.
Were we perfect then? Of course not. What nation was in 1776? We weren't the only nation then with slavery; we weren't the only nation then to fall short of guaranteeing equal rights for all citizens. But a few brave and wise souls put together a Constitution that, in time, has allowed us to strive for that perfection that we did not possess in 1776.
Beginning in 1932, though, it has all come flying apart. While the final march to equal rights as envisioned in our Constitution continued into the tumultuous 1960s, the foundation upon which all our rights are based has been eroded continuously since 1932 (or arguably, 1914 and the passage of the 16th Amendment, but that's a topic again for another day).
"Progressive taxation" (Orwell would be amused that this is the proper term for confiscation of wealth), massive federal government spending on programs never envisioned by the framers of the Constitution, a military twenty times the size necessary to defend our nation, restrictions on individual liberties in direct contravention of the Bill of Rights... Suffice to say, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, et. al., would not recognize the United States of America today.
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