IS THE SKY FALLING?
Have not posted anything in a while. Written a number of drafts but not been happy with the content or tone. Following what is happening in national and world events has gotten me into something of a “funk”.
I have always thought of myself as a positive kind of person. Tried to see humor, or at least irony, in most of the foibles of mankind.
But, I can’t see anything cute or funny in what is happening to the country I was born in and loved all my life. This is not a Democrat or Republican thing. A pox on both their houses. They both “brung us here where we is now”.
From my view there are two catastrophic problems facing the United States and everything else is the fruit of these two things.
One: You can’t have true civilization without civility and we are loosing our ability to be civil with one another. We are dividing into warring camps with irreconcilable differences. Not everything can be compromised.
Two: The discipline of simple mathematics. No matter what title or letters you put before or after you name, you cannot get 20 pounds of potatoes from a 10 pound sack and that is what we are trying to do. The universe does not care what your political affiliation is or if you don’t like the laws of mathematics. Ultimately, math is like gravity and spending money you don’t have is like trying to fly without wings. Deficit spending can only go so high before it all comes tumbling down.
If you are an individual, a corporation, or even a city and you spend “what you don’t got” you can file Bankruptcy. In the case of a corporation, Bankruptcy leaves the stockholders holding an empty bag and in the case of city (or state) the taxpayers are the recipients of said empty sack. If you are a nation you cannot declare Bankruptcy. Nations can do what we can’t do; print money. They start printing more and more paper money and the result is inflation or hyper-inflation. Inflation is always harmful or catastrophic to those on fixed or limited income (like the elderly) and can make a lifetime of savings do a vanishing act. As an example, gasoline that used to be $1.50 a gallon becomes $3 or $5 or $10 a gallon. Math is not evil it is just relentless.
History is littered with the carcasses of nations that did not practice the fiscal discipline required by the laws of mathematics. The news tells us that our nation is approaching a fiscal “cliff”.
I have reached that point where I recognize that, as a people, we lack the discipline to avoid what is going to happen very soon if we do not make some very difficult and painful changes. I am not alone in this observation.
Is it already to late? Is the sky falling?
Bob Bandy
