Your ‘downturn,’ their ‘upturn’ [UPTURN GIRLS LIVING IN A DOWNTURN WORLD]

Macleans.ca ^ | 18 March 2010 | Mark Steyn

[JLS]

Still foolish enough to be in the private sector paying for the benefits of the public sector?

I can’t remember exactly when I first encountered a pop-culture jetpack. Was it James Bond’s, courtesy of Q, in Thunderball? Or was it some comic book? At any rate, I no longer have to wait for mine. Martin Aircraft of Christchurch, New Zealand, have put one into production, for the cost of a top-of-the-line automobile—or about $100,000. It’s not clear to me where you’d be able to fly it, since government air-traffic agencies don’t seem eager to contemplate a world of individual human flight patterns. But still: the Bond jetpack is belatedly here.

Other than that, the future seems unlikely to be quite as futuristic as expected. The problem facing the developed world isn’t so very difficult to figure out. We’re living beyond not just our means but everybody’s means. You can strap on your jetpack, but where would you go? In the United States, Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute calculates that if the federal government were to increase every single tax by 30 per cent it would be enough to balance the books—in 25 years. Except that it wouldn’t. Because if you raised taxes by 30 per cent, government would spend even more than it already does, on the grounds that the citizenry needed more social programs and entitlements to compensate for their sudden reduction in disposable income.

[JLS]

Steyn talks about the role of government.

[PapaBear3625]

The only way the books could get balanced in our lifetimes would be if the government made RADICAL cutbacks to welfare programs.

[Clock King]

I say F*** it. Let the system crash completely.

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

Balancing the books is easy.

P J O’Rourke did it in three pages of Parliament of Whores ....

Acquiring the guts to do it is the hard part.

[JLS]

Steyn ping opportunity.