Over on Zero Hedge, James Hickman via Schiff Sovereign has a piece where he discusses the question. He argues that the % of debt to GDP is the primary indicator to monitor and not necessarily the debt level itself. He also points out that the only bucket of spending that can reasonably be cut is discretionary spending. The other buckets, i.e. defense, interest on the debt and Social Security/Medicare, can’t be touched. He notes that tough decisions need to be made, but he also implicitly knows that politicians don’t make tough decisions; they just kick the can down the road. As Mr. Hickman notes, reducing the number of bureaucrats will certainly help the economy grow as the regulatory state would be constrained.
While I agree with Mr. Hickman, I think more needs to be done even tackling the biggest issues: defense, Social Security and Medicare. As someone about to hit the retirement ages for Social Security and Medicare, These programs must be reformed and begun to be wound down. They are not sustainable especially with the decreasing birthrates. Like most government schemes, it was not well conceived and contributions have been used to fund other vote buying schemes, which is really all social programs are.
Therein is the real rub in solving the debt crisis we are in. We have allowed the government to push “progressive” (i.e. communist, anarchist and authoritarian) into our educational system for the last 100+ years. While Reagan and a couple of others temporarily pushed back their progress, the progressives captured the educational system throughout the U.S. Want some examples? Just go read any of the textbooks used in public schools today and it will be abundently clear. While communism and authoritarianism have only led to the death and destruction of communities since its advent, that is not how this is sold to the “young skulls full of mush” as Rush Limbaugh used to say.
To get out of the debt morass we are in, we need a citizenry that is self-reliant, mentally tough and solutions oriented. Instead, we have an incresing number of people that rely on the government for everything. These individuals are promised everything by their masters (i.e. government) in exchange for their votes to keep the masters in power and building the master’s individual wealth. Just look at the members in congress over the last 50 years. Look at their wealth when they arrived on Capitol HIll and when they left. This concentration of power and control is what our founders warned us about oh those many years ago and why they designed the government the way it was. The progressive march to destroy the Constitution and remove from textbooks the reasoning behind founders’ structuring of government that way, has been the primary agenda of the progressives and the media (ah sorry for repeating myself).
Today, we are witnessing the progressives trying to destroy our country right in front of our faces. The endless illegal immigration balkanizes the country leading to further divisions. You can’t have a country without a border and you can’t have a functioning country without a cohesive vision and set of values binding you together. We don’t have that today, and the question is will we ever have it again? Unless we can come together as a self-reliant population that takes care of the few who really can’t take care of themselves, we will continue down the path of all other failed societies throughout human history.
