What’s right with living within our means?

A corollary is what is wrong with living above our means!

This is not some academic discussion or political sales pitch. Today our national income to pay all our bills comes from taxes, and borrowing. The federal government borrows about $3 billion a day on top of the tax income, which is in the trillions. A lot of Americans loan money to ourselves through bonds to reap the interest income. A lot of foreigners do the same (about a fourth these days, and growing). The catch is the principle, which usually declines in value over time, call it the declining dollar. What foreigner in their right mind would keep this up, or how much interest do we have to offer to have these foreigners hedge their loan bets. In English, why would a foreign person loan us a billion dollars today to expect the same billion dollars will only be worth ½ billion dollars in the future. And in either case of the loans, we are routinely passing our debt payments (principle and interest) off to our children and grandchildren. When they figure out during their voting years how many months of the year they will have to work to pay off all these dollars, then heads will roll. Maybe they can try borrow their way out of their situation, and maybe they will be able to do so. But eventually, living beyond our means and debt will catch up. Which future generation is left holding the bag?

Worse case is that nobody will loan us or our children money, or can. It has happened before, and will probably happen again. The unknowns are when and how will all this come to pass? In modern overstatement terms, the outcomes will be “awesome”.

Then we will have to live within our means, which are considerable. People will still go to work, pay taxes, and politicians will rule and fight over the budget priorities. Borrowing may continue, though it will take the old idea of bond drives, or war bond drives to enhance the sales pitch to the domestic loaners. But in the end, we will live within our means, as we have done before.

It is to our American advantage to think about vital National interests, that which is near and dear and important, and without which our Nation will go upon the scrap heap of history (as well as our lifestyles). When we have to live within our means, this prescription of a thinking process will help.

The whole value of political debate is about our culture and future. This citizen sees it simply, as a debate about what may happen vice what will happen, depending on the political choices and vote. Those who go the route of tear it down in order to rebuild it in their way scare me (especially the unelected environmentalists). Even the strategy of spend ourselves into debt in order to finally live within our means scares me. Perhaps we can elect citizens politician leaders who will actually lead us into some other way that benefits us today, tomorrow, and in the near future.

Certainly national defense is up there as a vital National interest. But in the same vein, how much of our spending today is a jobs program or an engineer welfare program vice a defense program. This is cruel talk, but will be necessitated when we have to live within our means. This idea can be extrapolated throughout the federal budget to include the scientific industrial complex (think global warming types), homeland defense and immigration control, old fashioned public policy agencies like transportation, electricity, clean water and sewage, heat, public health (think of vaccinations and the CDC and food and toy safety), and agriculture (think healthy food and sustaining farmers, and not big agribusiness). Even our young people’s free education benefits will decline as they should, compared to other vital National interests.

Of course the biggest issue is benefits and even earmarks for all the presently designated beneficiaries. Again, expect “awesome” outcomes from future voters, who after all will have to live in their real world, which includes living within one’s means, and willingness to pay for the past debts passsed on to them.

One does wonder how we got to this point? Call it “incremental creep”, kind of like the military idea of “mission creep”. The recent decades have been good financially, the Cold War has ended, the world is becoming (albeit very slowly) better off in quality of life issues, and the status quo has seemed like the constant that will go on forever. We Americans have gone this route too, and if a little is OK, some more is better, and so on until we and our politicians are some combination of overextending ourselves domestically and even in the rest of the world. Hopefully it will continue, but again why would any foreigner loan us money expecting to lose money in the end. Of course, another corollary could be “why would any rich American hang around to pay even more taxes” when he or she has global loyalties and opportunities. And these opportunities extend beyond the financial, as in where to live, recreate, and educate their children.

“Incremental creep” may bring citizens to using their God given options of revolt, or civil war. One hopes the glue of American civilization and culture, the vote, will prevail, and it probably will. This question is so foreboding it is scary. Yet we have present leaders, albeit with poor leadership skills for the future, that are leading us this way into the unknown.

Rather than going “awesome”, we should elect leaders that will incrementally lead us towards more realistic American and New World ideas that we can afford, and do the basics, like enhance the next generation of children. Now that is a priority when push comes to shove.