Tag: debt

The Six-Trillion Dollar Man

Post author By Editor
Post date May 4, 2021
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“Mr. Biden is making a six-trillion dollar bet that promoting popular programs will be popular,” offered NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on Sunday, “and that he’ll be rewarded for getting things done, long before the actual bill comes due.”

That “Six trillion dollars”? New splurging “on social spending, infrastructure, climate change, health care and more.”

The host intoned that this constitutes the “return of big government.”

“We have to prove democracy still works, that our government still works,” Joe Biden, the 47th president, implored Congress last week, “and we can deliver for our people.”

Spend = Deliver.
Deliver = Democracy.
Democracy = Spend!

So goes a federal “democracy” wherein voters never get a straight, democratic choice on how much government should spend and tax.* Instead, politicians opt for their beloved “deficits forever” method. Purchase votes today — “People like it when you give them money” — and leave for future generations of voters the tax burden needed to pay that bill. No pain, all gain.

Smart re-election strategy, some say.

“Democratic strategists are betting that the infighting in the Republican Party, the extremism on display during the Jan. 6 attack … and the sheer scale of the trillion dollar programs Democrats have pushed through this year,” reports The Washington Post, “leads to a reorienting of partisan divisions that can overcome historical patterns.” Meaning Democrats avoid the traditional loss of congressional seats for a president’s party.

“Will voters care about the scope of Mr. Biden’s plans?” Todd inquired. “… care about the price tag?”

Likely to the degree they notice paying that price.

“President Trump and the Republicans may have made it a bit easier for Mr. Biden by spending big themselves,” reminded Todd.

He’s not wrong there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Colorado voters have such a choice: a vote on any tax increase and on government spending increases. It’s called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) and was passed by citizen initiative back in 1992. The politicians and lobbyists just hate it, as I detail here.

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Photo by Anno Málie

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Tags debt, government spending, Joe Biden, spending, taxes

government transparency

Do Not Discuss This!

Some stories linger in the background, under-acknowledged, never really addressed, driving us a bit crazy.

Example? Deficit spending and debt accumulation.

The problems that deficit financing inflicts upon us are many and devastating. We would be a lot wealthier, healthier, and wiser were the federal government not so madly out-of-control. We could invest in all sorts of great things, and prices would be more stable, and … and … and …

But what can we do about it?

It’s not obvious. So we don’t talk about it much.

And the debt only grows, with destructive hyperinflation looming as an ever-increasing danger.

The other under-discussed story is even more disturbing — so we ignore it even more studiously.

Within the last several years headlines in The New York Times and on TV have covered it, yet … very few people talk about it, despite the startling revelations.

The issue? UFOs — a strange subject at face value, which, once you poke into it, gets even weirder.

We level-headed yokels used to deny the existence of UFOs, but now the Pentagon has confirmed their persistent plaguing of Navy jets and seacraft, and the Army has acknowledged its ongoing study of UFO-derived “meta-materials.”*

In June, the Senate will be briefed on the subject, per instructions in a recent stimulus bill. (Which brings us back to our first blank-out issue.) Meanwhile, as we wait for what could be big news, new revelations of repeated incursions by UFOs against a Navy fleet 100 miles off the California coast back in 2019 appear in specialty media** but barely make a ripple in major media.

Wait — Fox just featured a segment on a Pentagon confirmation of flying pyramids!

Will we make headway on UFOs before the debt?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* French scientist and UFO researcher Jacques Vallee is also engaged in research on UFO-site-retrieved mystery alloys.

** See Richard Dolan discuss these recent Channel Island incursions, based chiefly on the report in The Warzone.

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previously on Common Sense with Paul Jacob:

It’s Aliens (May 30, 2019)

The Whys Behind the Whats (June 25, 2019)

Stranger Things 2019 (January 2, 2020)

Two Conspiracies Unearthed (December 10, 2020)

Why We Still Live (December 18, 2020)

Tags debt, deficit, UFO

national politics & policies political economy too much government

The Slow Bullet

Modern government finance is like Russian Roulette … but with incredibly slow bullets.

We spend money. We create money out of thin air. We borrow it. We promise the Moon. We deliver rocks. With each action, we spin the chamber and pull the trigger. That slowround doesn’t immediately hit, so we do it again.

Calling the perennial deficits and ballooning debt a “predictable crisis,” Nick Gillespie at Reason writes that our federal government’s debt “is already choking down economic growth, but in the future, it could lead to ‘sudden inflation,’ and ‘a loss of confidence in the federal government’s ability or commitment to repay its debts in full.’” And worse: “‘Such a crisis could spread globally’ causing some ‘financial institutions to fail.’ That’s all according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which has been warning Americans about the long-term consequence of the ballooning debt for years.”

This is an old warning. I have been talking about it for years, too. So have you. But once politicians start playing the game, it’s hard for them to stop. They see and we see the benefits, but that slow motion slug has yet to strike the target.

Gillespie makes a better analogy than “slow bullets” (which don’t exist): “Like the coronavirus, the debt problem has the potential to seemingly appear out of the blue and turn our world upside down in a matter of weeks.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb gained fame talking about “black swans,” major events we cannot predict. But he insists that the financial crisis resulting from government overspending is not a black swan. It’s predictable. We just do not know when.

Here’s a fourth analogy:

In free fall, you don’t feel a thing … until you hit the pavement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags black swan, debt, deficits, imprudence

media and media people national politics & policies

Stranger Things 2019

On Tuesday, I seconded George F. Will’s judgment that the biggest story of 2019 was the Hong Kong protest movement.

In America, though, 2019’s top news story must be how the anti-Trump movement morphed from Russiagate, which fizzled upon release of the Mueller Report, to the quasi-impeachment bit over the most yawn-inducing scandal of all time, Trump’s Ukraine Phone Call.

It is certainly a strange story, but there are stranger big stories from last year. I am tempted to assert that the year’s biggest news is actually the Biggest Non-Story: trillion-dollar deficits and ever-increasing debt.

No protest over that enormity. Getting anyone to talk about it is like getting the government to come clean on … UFOs.

Which brings us to the absolutely weirdest story of 2019. During this last swing ‘round the sun, multiple sources associated with (and inside) the federal government, admitted that, within the corridors of our un-beloved Deep State, artifacts from crashed ‘and landed’ UFOs were being studied.

After decades and decades of ridicule, eye-rolls, stonewalling, lying, and disinformation about ‘flying saucers,’ several important government bodies — including the Army and Navy — now admit that they almost regularly encounter astounding … crafts … that are not part of our nation’s official sea and air technology inventory.

These admissions amount to ‘disclosure.’ But it is not an information dump — disclosure is just a trickle, so far.*

Why? Perhaps the idea is that we cannot handle the truth.

Or perhaps they can’t.

Which isn’t really unlike ever-increasing deficits and debt, now that I think about it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Still, even with a mere handful of official and near-official admissions of retrieved UFO tech, the story looms large indeed.

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Tags debt, deficit, UFO

Accountability

Sinkhole States

What do citizens lack most at all levels of government? Truth in accounting.

So Sheila Weinberg really has her work cut out. This very morning, her Chicago-based research-tank called, not coincidentally, Truth in Accounting released its annual Financial State of the States report. The new data shows that “the total debt among the 50 states decreased by $62.6 billion in FY 2018 due to a prosperous economy.”

But that’s where the good news ends. “Every state, except for Vermont, has balanced budget requirements,” notes the report, “yet even with these rules in place, states have accumulated more than $1.5 trillion in debt.”

Almost entirely from unfunded pension and employee benefit liabilities.

“At the end of the fiscal year (FY) 2018, 40 states did not have enough money to pay all of their bills. This means that to balance the budget … elected officials have not included the true costs of the government in their budget calculations and have pushed costs onto future taxpayers.”

Put another way: Your government is lying to you.

One interesting feature of the analysis is its top five “Sunshine States” —

Alaska
North Dakota
Wyoming
Utah
Idaho

— and its bottom five “Sinkhole States” —

Hawaii
Massachusetts
Connecticut
Illinois
New Jersey

Fun fact: It just so happens that all five of the top states have a statewide process of voter initiative and referendum, while none of the “sinkhole states” have this democratic check.

The new online State Data Lab has the skinny on every state. Compare your state against the rest.

Be brave.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags debt, responsibility, states, transparency, Truth in Accounting

education and schooling subsidy

Sell College Short?

college, student, debt, loan, forgiveness, hat,

We are often lectured on the importance of a college education. The path to upward mobility is greased via higher education, we are informed, and all that investment in time and money pays off … with a lifetime of higher salaries and better opportunities.

“The typical American with a bachelor’s degree or higher,” President Barack Obama pointed out back in 2014, “earns over $28,000 more per year than someone with just a high school diploma.”

Accordingly, Obama urged “students and parents” to “begin preparing yourself for an education beyond high school.”

Was he just pulling our legs?

After all, $28,000 extra each year for many decades isn’t chump change. Yet, if college proves such a royal road to wealth, why would highly educated folks gaining such lucrative earning-power need the bailouts … especially from taxpayers who didn’t make that self-investment?

That subsidy of the richer by the poorer is precisely what many Democratic Party presidential candidates are promising younger voters, with Sen. Bernie Sanders topping the proposed taxpayer-generosity by offering to cancel all $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt.

“Not satisfied with having the government take over 20 percent of the economy with his Medicare-for-All program,” James Joyner writes at Outside the Beltway, “the Vermont Senator wants the government to assume all debt taken on for education and make college absolutely free from here on out.”

If a college education is worth what it costs, no bailout should be necessary.

And only in the political world would anyone suggest giving away such a valuable commodity for free.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.