Tag: debt crisis

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folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

The Energy Trap

madness of crowds, energy policy, electric cars, fuel, oil

After the spectacular failures of the COVID response, “the experts” appear to be on a roll. That is, they are once again not “following the science” but being led by politics, ideology, and the madness of crowds.

The big issues right now demonstrating mass folly on a societal level? Aside from agriculture policy, trade, subsidy, banking and high finance, and “climate change,” the big one — not unrelated to most of the rest — is the power grid.

About which our leaders seem to be nuts.

What we know is the supply of “renewable energy” is nowhere near enough to meet the general demand for energy. California’s a great example, announcing “the end of fossil fuel-​powered car sales by 2035” but sporting a power grid that is already unable to handle demand, which became bitterly funny when the Golden State asked citizens not to charge their electric cars during high-​demand hot days.

“US Power Grid Needs Trillions in Upgrades to Accommodate Renewable Energy Demands,” reads a recent Epoch Times feature.

Trillions.

It’s not as if America is rolling, like Uncle Scrooge, in trillion-​dollar surpluses. As I type these words, the US Debt Clock shows the federal government quickly approaching $31 trillion in public debt.

So now we’ll need more trillions to keep the lights on?

Yes.

Our lives depend on electrical energy, our civilization runs on electricity, but our leaders have been painting us into a corner. Bad policies that hobble efficient fuel sources and pushing inefficient sources have set a trap.

And the only real way out of the trap is one politicians don’t like: admitting they were wrong and reversing their policies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly national politics & policies responsibility

Failing in the Future Biz

future, predicting the future, political, politics, collage, photomontage, illustration, prophecy, fortune teller, mistake

If you can’t sell us the future, you’re doing it wrong. We all want to get there in one piece.

Right now, a horde of Republican presidential candidates and a small cohort of Democrats vie to present themselves as visionaries, leaders.

Yet, what they all have in common is that they ignore the most serious issue facing us. Bigger than borders and terror and ISIS and gay marriage and all that, is the financial stability of the United States. Our future is in peril because of the continual Washington stalemate of never-​ending deficit spending and continual debt growth — total debt being around $100 trillion.

The reason for this enormity? Politicians like to promise things, lots of things, very expensive things like wars and entitlements, to win our votes. But these same promiscuous over-​promisers have more than a little difficulty agreeing on the taxes that would pay for all those “things.”

Why the difficulty? Because Americans already pay plenty in taxes and very few of us non-​Omaha-​based non-​billionaires care to fork over even more of our hard-​earned pay to a wasteful leviathan.

Any respectable vision of the future must acknowledge the current predicament, and provide a way out — before it’s too late, like it may very well already be … for Greece.

Wanting something for nothing isn’t Greek to any of us, unfortunately. That’s why we need leaders with the honesty and courage to present a vision more real than government providing ever more goodies on credit ad infinitum.

Credit just doesn’t add up, infinitely. The more you rack up debt, the more finite your future.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Future Fail

 

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folly too much government

Borrow It Forward

The consequences of borrowing to fund welfare states have been getting more obviously destructive. In the European Union, the fates of governments with still a few years to go to pay the piper are tethered to the fates of even more wildly profligate states.

Yet the solution most EU officials propose, aside from more tax hikes, is to lend and borrow even more. Whole governments go on the welfare roll. The countries delivering the loans in turn “borrow” from their own unwilling citizens.

When will it end?

Maybe never, if the precedent being pondered by the innovative government of Portugal is implemented and gains traction.

A court there has ruled that it’s unconstitutional for Portugal to save money by cutting the salaries of government employees. (Perfectly all right to hike taxes, though.) So the government is thinking of end-​running the decision by paying workers part of their salaries in treasury bills instead of the usual funny money.

The logic is stunning. Obviously, we can pay everything we owe just by issuing IOUs! Not since Rumpelstiltskin wove straw into more straw has anybody fashioned something this magical.

Nobody need ever go bankrupt again so long as we all keep issuing IOUs to vendors and creditors. All the bad consequences of bad practices will maybe just disappear through this expedient! Incredible!!!

Maybe I’ll call up my credit-​card company to explain how this works. Once I figure it out myself, that is.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Townhall: The Politic Path of Least Resistance

The looming debt load will some day come a‑crashing. But politicians are doing nothing — or nest to nothing — to stop the growth of the debt, and thus keep on piling on the extent and severity of debt.

So click on over to Townhall​.com, to read this weekend’s column by Yours Truly, the purveyor of Common Sense, and then come back here for further reading.

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Accountability too much government

Congress to Blame

Last week, the budget deal, with its first consequence: the immediate increase of U.S. government debt, to outsize the Gross Domestic Product. 

By week’s end, that notoriously rising debt was downgraded in the ratings.

Immediately, politicians began blaming each other.

In other words: No surprises.

Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Michele Bachmann both called for Timothy Geithner to resign. Sen. Paul argued that “Secretary Geithner assured everyone that raising the debt ceiling without a plan to balance the budget would not result in a downgrade to our debt.… He was clearly wrong. Our debt has been downgraded for the first time in history, and now American taxpayers will have to suffer the consequences.” Rep. Bachmann blamed the president first, then demanded Geithner’s walking papers.

Now, I hate to defend Geithner (he probably should resign), but the debt debacle is Congress’s fault. 

But such niceties of responsibility didn’t stop Move​-on​.org from setting up a Facebook campaign to impugn the Tea Party, blaming the Tea Party’s cussedness for the downgrade. 

Really? To focus only on the one political group actively trying to decrease the size of the debt demonstrates huge hunks of partisan chutzpah. By trying and failing to restrain spending, Tea Party folks only demonstrated Congress’s dedication to binge spending. The fault is in the binging, not in the feckless attempt at self-restraint.

Which is just what S & P considered: the company cited the wimpiness of the debt deal as the reason for the downgrade.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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too much government

Don’t Spend that Penny

Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards succinctly explains that not only does Rep. Boehner’s budget plan fail to cut spending $1 trillion over the next ten years — as advertised — but it “doesn’t actually cut spending at all.”

Zilch. Spending goes up.

“Why doesn’t the House leadership propose real cuts?” asks Edwards. He means identify specific line items that can be cut back — now, as in today or this week — rather than setting optimistic and unenforceable spending caps on future congresses. This especially goes for “caps” that don’t actually cap spending, but allow it to grow by, say, $7 – 8 trillion over the next decade. 

Boehner’s plan allows debt to continue to pile up at historically huge levels. But he’s not alone. Obama has no plan. Reid’s plan? Calling it “smoke and mirrors” gives smoke and mirrors a bad name.

The Penny Plan, introduced by Florida Rep. Connie Mack and endorsed by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, has some merit. It would cut the budget by one percent for six years and then cap federal government spending at 18 percent of GDP. 

Yes, cutting federal spending by only one penny on each dollar (one percent) for six years, rather than increasing spending by upwards of 7 percent a year under the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline budget, would balance the budget in eight years.

But to restore balance and end the debt crisis, a penny cut has to actually be a cut.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.