That’s the advice my father gave to me, when I first found myself in debt up to my eyeballs. I thought he simply didn’t understand. I explained, as patiently as I could, that things like cable TV and renting videos were necessities – not luxuries. I explained how I simply needed more money, and since I worked for him, it was his responsibility to pay me more so I could maintain my standard of living.
He patiently explained that “when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is to stop digging.” There’s no way to spend yourself out of debt. I learned the truth of that, unfortunately, the hard way. “Making do” became a part of my vocabulary, just as “discretionary income” and “charge it” became a thing of the past.
Here’s the problem…when it’s just you – or you, your wife, and your kids – it’s not that difficult to get everybody on board the “let’s watch every penny” train. When you’re a nation, not so much, if only because a lot of the people that are the beneficiaries of “tax and spend” policies vote.
George Bernard Shaw once opined, “A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul.” The problem we’ve got is the very policies that are driving us down the road to ruin are the same ones that are taking hundreds of thousands of citizens off the tax roles, turning them from those that pay taxes, into those that pay nothing, but get a good bit in return. As yourself, if you were given a choice between paying your fair share of taxes, with the result that everyones’ taxes went down, or paying nothing, getting “rebates” back (even though you’d never paid in to begin with) and seeing those that pay have their taxes raised exponentially, which would you choose. Trouble is, we’ve got far too few “Peters” and an ever-increasing number of “Pauls” that are sucking the rest of the people dry.
Even more insidious is that the Obama administration is busy thumbing their noses at the unmutable laws of finance, even in the face of international condemnation of their behavior. (Hang on…international condemnation? I thought the Rest of the World loves The Chosen One. How can they disagree with his pronouncements? Perhaps it’s because they know his plans will bring financial ruin down upon us all.) You see, when China says, “stop spending so much money…you are devaluing our investment,” and Europe complains that the Big O is going too far, too fast, too soon, you’ve gotta wonder, what do they know that HE doesn’t? How about this: Remember Pravda? The former official newspaper of the U.S.S.R.? They’re still around, and reprinted a blogger’s screed about the USA in their online edition. Read it here.
When the former Soviet Union lectures us on capitalism and our headlong rush into Marxism, does anybody here worry?
If you work for Obama, apparently not. The Feds now own most of the banking system, the mortgage system, two of the Big Three automobile manufacturers, and if they get their wish, the health care system. And of course, to pay for all this, they are printing money like crazy, and schlepping our (soon to be worthless) debt all over Asia.
Color me scared outta my wits.
We’re in a hole here, people. Sooner or later (and it’s likely sooner, than later) China will say “thanks, but no thanks” to buying more debt. Every man, woman, and child in America will wake up to the fact that there’s more to taxes than INCOME taxes. While Obama is busy trying to soak the rich, few realize that his definition of same is a sliding scale (downward), and that they ONLY way he can pay for all his plans is to tax EVERYBODY – say by instituting a national sales tax – on top of all the OTHER taxes we have now.
Welcome to Obamanomics, the financial engine that drives the ObamaNation. Oh, and get your shovels. You’ll need them as we keep digging the hole we’re in deeper, on our way to financial Hell.
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