I keep hearing that the road we are on is unsustainable. Yet this word does not seem to resonate with most people. What unsustainable means is that we can’t keep doing what we are doing without it eventually breaking or going bankrupt. And yet the majority of Americans appear to continue to think that we can.
I just saw a poll in the Austin American Statesman where they were asking voters where in the budget the state should cut. The two biggest areas of the state’s spending were in education and health care. And yet, that is the area the vast majority of those polled indicated cuts should not be made.
It isn’t that these programs aren’t important. They are. It isn’t that these programs aren’t good. They are. Whether they are effective are not is debatable but that isn’t the issue either. The issue is that we can’t afford them.
Who doesn’t want small classroom size? Currently Texas mandates an elementary class of only 22 students per every teacher. I think that is great. But at what expense? When I went to school, I never had a class size that small. And I think that I turned out pretty well educated.
At what point do you stop? If 22 students per class size is good, then 20 is even better. Better still is 18. But does it really help? And is it worth the expense? I don’t think so but that isn’t really the point. The point is that unless we want to have our taxes raised again, then a larger class size is just going to have to occur.
And if we allow our taxes to go up, I again ask, at what point do we stop? You just can’t tax people forever before they decide to move to a state (or a country) that allows them to keep more of what they make or have made.
I think people, in general, are pretty much fed up with the amount of taxes we pay. They don’t think they are getting their money’s worth and they pretty much don’t want to pay more, regardless of the services they may have to give up. That’s why Texas keeps electing Republicans in office. The Republicans continue to pledge not to raise taxes (although they did it anyway when they passed the Franchise Margins tax on businesses). However, they aren’t doing much to cut spending. And that is where our politicians really need to step it up.
However, I don’t see our politicians really stepping up, until we, as a people, actually tell them to. If this Statesman poll was any indication, we simply aren’t ready to do that yet. I guess we still need a little more economic pain before we are.
I got a kick out of Greece when the government reached the point of not being able to pay its bills. The Greek government decided to cut spending, which was quickly followed by riots and protests from the public citizens. So then the Greek government decided to raise taxes. This too, was followed by more riots and protests. The public simply doesn’t understand the reality of finance. You can’t spend more than you make forever, because eventually no one will loan you any more money.
The United States is in the same boat. Yes it is a larger boat. Our solution is to counterfeit our currency by printing more money. Greece couldn’t do that since they don’t control the Euro printing press. Eventually the Eurozone bailed out Greece by printing them some Euros they could use to pay their bills. However, it came with stipulations that Greece would get its spending under control.
But the United States can’t counterfeit its money forever. Because sooner or later, other countries will refuse to accept our counterfeit money if we do. So we still have some time to get our spending under control, but I’m simply not seeing the U.S. citizen accepting that as the reality. This poll was simply another indication of America not wanting to spend within our limits. And until that attitude changes, we are headed on the path to bankruptcy.
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