Yes, but peel back one more layer on the onion. The voting public insists that it can vote itself money from the treasury. Short term (6-8 months) we can work through this mess. Longer term we will have to have a commitment from the average voter to allow elected leaders to stand on the brakes in the spending department. Funding Medicare, SS, wars, social spending with massive bond selling will have to stop.
The chances of that? I try not to think too much about it.
“The voting public insists that it can vote itself money from the treasury. “
Spot on.
Worst of all, it’s our kids we are screwing...
Should we just teach them to say “Yes sir, right away sir” in Chinese now?
The right thing to do, and also a very hard one. We should in fact be running a budget surplus, with the surplus invested in gold, oil, etc. that is if we want the gov to be in the retirement business (i.e. social security). Personally I think that is a) unconstitutional b) a bad investment and c) bad policy (encourages dependence). So, for my part, cut taxes and give me the dif. BUT we must reduce the size of government and the number and intrusiveness of government regulations. I want a government that has a limited number of responsibilities and it does those things well. Meanwhile I’m not holding my breath.