Want to Control Deficit? Rein in State Spending (If Europe has its PIIGS, we have our CANINes)

CNBC ^ | 02/12/2010 | Kirby Daley

[JasonC]

Sure. I think the middle class can rationally decide between paying significantly higher payroll taxes to fund the level of benefits in current law, on an actuarially sound basis, or to cut those benefits. They'd want a sensible proposal for the latter, meaning something sufficiently gradual that it spares those who planned on current benefit promises and have no time to adapt; they'll want voluntary principles and choice in the transition. But people fully understand that the present system is unsustainable and set up to screw over the next 2 generations, and they do not approve of political inaction and fecklessness on the subject.

Pretending that the likes of Pelosi and Frank and Franken and Obama, are politically untouchable or even serious opponents at all - or pretending that the American people will fall for any handout boondoggle (when they've just rejected Obamacare resoundingly), is pretending and hysterical.

Americans were upset with Bush's policies because they led to financial failure. If he hadn't passed trillion dollar new drug entitlements, he'd have been more successful and more popular, not less. The entire socialist-left model of buying people's votes with their own money is busted, and the people know it.

[Erskine Childers]

Well, I hope you're right.

But it's clearly a forlorn hope. Short of a crisis, nothing will convince anything approaching a majority of voters to cut their benefits. When push comes to shove, as it must, they'll opt for higher taxes on "the rich."

[JasonC]

Nothing "forlorn" about it.

Our contemporaries are such whining cowards it disgusts me. Our forefathers faced actual mortal danger from armed tyrants with ten times the pluck and confidence you-all show in the face of easy free choices for the sake of ever greater future prosperity, and clownish domestic political opponents.

[Erskine Childers]

Unlike you, our founders didn't give a tinker's damn about the will of the majority. In fact, during the entire Revolution there was never anything approaching an absolute majority that supported independence. The founders despised democracy and for that reason gave us a republic instead. And they won their freedoms and what's left of ours not by asking the leave of the ne'er-do-wells of the day but rather by their own strong right arms.

They then built into the Constitution safeguards against mob rule, such as apportionmentamong the states of direct taxes and a Senate controlled by the States to ensure that the hated and feared mob would be unable to use the federal government to oppress men like themselves.

Both of those, to name but two of them, were undone by the People almost 100 years ago. It's been downhill since then for guys like me (and I would think you).

The founders to a man would be appalled that the franchise is enjoyed by convicts and bankrupts and those on the public dole. They would weep if the knew that the federal government can tax us on our income and is privy to every aspect of our business dealings, and that all political power is not vested in free men of character and substance like themselves.

That's why I say we need to jettison the notion that we can win our freedom through the ballot box. It's far too late for that, again, at least short of some major crisis that you seem hellbent on averting.

We need to let the crisis come, and then, like the founders, to keep our powder dry.

The socialist programs that are slowly eating out our substance began 100 years ago and have over that considerable period grown monstrously in reach. While there have been a few temporary reactions and rollbacks, State Socialism has scored one strategic victory after the next. That is very clearly a deep and secular trend. For Heaven's sake, do you seriously deny that?

From where I'm standing, one can only scoff at the assertion that a single election will allow us to, for example, end the Departments of Energy, Education, Agriculture, Housing and so forth, much less end (or at least seriously roll back the reach of) the income tax, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

And you persist in this naive belief despite the fact that handing the entire federal government to the GOP only made matters worse? After Karl Rove declared the GOP the "Party of big government?"

Is that seriously what you're saying?

Because I'm having a hard time accepting that a guy with your obvious brain power could buy such a patent absurdity.