Confrontation Nation

Madame M:

Thanks for giving readers a peek at what each of our blogs are like!  And now on to today’s topic…

It’s too early to make definitive statements about Fiscal Year 12, which just closed September 30^th for the federal government, but it appears that total spending actually declined about a 100 billion dollars from the year before.  The deficit, while still quite large, appears to have shrunk by at least $200B, and maybe by as much as $500B.  It is on track to shrink further, but it is not going to go away on the present course, because that course has been a dozen years or more in the making.

There IS a way to meet our financial—deficit, debt, and otherwise—crises:

Pain.

Shared sacrifice.

Confronting irrational and excessive fear.

Taxing detrimental things the most and productive the least.

For instance:

Getting rid of deductions simplifies and equalizes the tax code without a flat rate, and generates $1.3T in revenue.  That more than solves the yearly deficit.  It will also mean pain.  And shared sacrifice—from everyone.  And maybe a painful transitioning recession.

Recognizing the global stability of the core, and the desire of non-core countries to join the core, means the world is far more low-risk than sometimes thought.  What risks exist are not of the big-ticket-item (tanks, ships, fighters and bombers) variety, and cost much less to address.  That could save half, maybe even two-thirds, of the present expenditures on “security.”  Savings: $300B to $1T a year.  It will also mean living with some general risk so that the certainty of present-course financial disintegration is averted.

Taxing environmentally damaging things will generate revenue AND steer us into REAL energy independence while we try to stabilize the environment and the climate AND will spur the transition to a clean, renewable energy future without the problems of direct subsidization.

And eventually, working citizens can get a real, sustainable, lowering of their taxes, WHILE the debt is paid down.

And along the way, we can decide how far we want to go in reforming government payments (transfer and otherwise) such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, in addition to all the things that get lumped into “welfare.”

The political system is completely unresponsive to the above, of course.  It doesn’t lead, it follows.  Right now, it follows the selfish plutocrats.  If non-plutocratic Americans take the energy they traditionally fritter on sports watching, shopping, holiday obsession, entertainment, and a number of other distractions and diversions, and instead apply it consistently and continually to the above, the system will respond.  Quite grudgingly at first, as the Great Ship rights itself, but it still is built to respond to the call of its Great People Captains.

We keep asking our politicians to come up with “a plan,” but actually, the plan is better if we come up with it and demand they implement it.

The world has so much promise, probably never more promise at any time in its history, and is set for more common cooperation than ever before. It’s just that right now, that world is largely in the hands of the selfish and the short-sighted, at least in the flagship country still in the lead (that would be US).  To wrest it away from the visionless will take confronting our own selfishness, illusions, and delusions, and the swallowing of painful, bitter medicine.  Medicine that will take a long time to heal our afflictions, but that give us real hope that life can be so much better than we presently imagine.

America, this is your character test.  The great historical pen is out to write either a chapter of renewal or a chapter of disintegration.  And unborn descendants perhaps watch from a spiritual plane whether those they will mortally call their “ancestors” rise to true greatness or just tell themselves they’re great and go back to all their petty diversions, distractions, and denials.   From greatness will come future reverence and present self-pride.  From the other will come future despising—and perhaps present self-loathing.