Stealing from the Next Generation(s) .... It's All About Too Much Government Spending and Wasteful Ways ... In Other Words, It's the Spending, Stupid!

Government spending is out of control and has been for a long time. A very long time, in fact.


While the debate about taxes and debt goes on, the government just keeps upping the spending to unconscionable levels.


Instead of concentrating on how much government is spending and assuring ourselves that We the People are getting the biggest bang for our bucks, we instead pay far too much attention to proposed tax increases, especially on the rich, and the ongoing huge fiscal deficits and the ever growing national debt that results from that spending and taxing.


So let's just keep it simple.


In fact, if we want to get a handle on all this excessive, do-gooder and protective paternalistic government, all we need to focus on is the level of government spending, regulations and waste. And then we'll quickly and easily see the negative impact of government on what otherwise could have been private sector risk taking and investment as well. And on the loss of higher employment and more tax dollars too.


Due to political pandering and game playing, our nation's economic health and many of our fellow citizens' well being are in sorry conditions, to put it bluntly.


Robbing the Next Generation of Fiscal Freedom tells the sad story graphically, simply and succinctly:


"The deficit has fallen from the Washington agenda with remarkable speed. No one is talking about a “grand bargain.” The White House and House Republicans have proposed competing budgets, but neither side expects significant action. And, in any event, current-year deficits are shrinking rapidly.


Beltway deficit hawks are baffled and depressed–and still warning that the long-run picture, though somewhat improved, remains worrisome. Some are looking for new ways to illustrate the problem, realizing that warnings of imminent financial crisis or soaring interest rates have a Chicken Little quality to them and that ominous mountain-like charts showing the trajectory of future government debt aren’t persuasive,


In a new book, “Dead Men Ruling: How to Restore Fiscal Freedom and Rescue our Future,” Urban Institute economist C. Eugene Steuerle highlights a new way to illustrate the reasons to worry about the status quo. He starts with federal revenues past and projected under current law, and then calculates how much is left after paying Social Security, Medicare and other benefits promised under law and interest on the federal debt – that is, how much is left for scientific and medical research, education, infrastructure, defense and government salaries. The answer: Less and less.

In 1974, 50% of federal revenues were remaining for Congress to allocate as it saw fit. In 1994, it was 27%. This year, it’ll be 16%.


“Dead and retired policymakers put America on a budget path in which spending will grow faster than any conceivable growth in revenues – even if the president and Congress never create any other spending program,” Mr. Steuerle writes.


“Yesterday’s policymakers have robbed their successors of fiscal freedom,” he says."


Summing Up


Keep your eyes on what really matters to the future of our kids and grandkids ---- government spending and its growth.


Whether that growth is financed by a cheaper dollar, more taxes or higher debt levels, the effect in all cases is bad.


Substituting bureaucratic  government "wisdom" for the risk taking entrepreneurialism of free people operating in the private sector is always a bad idea.


When government spends, even if it borrows to do so, that leaves less money for present sand future private sector entrepreneurs and risk takers to invest in profit seeking and job creating business endeavors of their own choosing, including the right to fail as well as to succeed --- but with their own money at risk and their own time invested, of course.


To repeat, watch the government spending. Our "public servants" will be trying everything possible to convince us that more money is needed to do all the wonderful things they intend to do --- but never in fact accomplish --- and in the end that money is "paid for" in many ways, both seen and unseen, by all of us.


And it's all so wrong. Very, very wrong.


That's my take.


Thanks. Bob.