Mental Deficit
Hello there! Sorry it's been so long since I put up anything new, I've been packing up my stuff and moving to a new place. Anyway, you don't care about that, let's get to the point...
A week or so ago I was at work and one of my co-workers walked in and immediately started bitching to me about President Bush.
"Do you know what that asshole is doing?" he said to me, "He's just running up the national debt, doing favors for his friends. We had a SURPLUS a few years ago, and now we're deeper in debt than ever before!"
Like most people when confronted with the subject of the federal deficit I rolled my eyes at him, but he just wouldn't stop. This guy is my friend and I like him just fine, but people who bitch about the deficit are only demonstrating their ignorance on the subject. Not wanting to get into an argument, I just nodded my head and listened for a few minutes then slowly backed away.
The problem with the deficit is NOT the deficit itself, but rather peoples' perception, or more accurately their MISperception of what the deficit is. Uninformed laymen, as the VAST majority of Americans are, tend to think of the federal deficit in terms of their own finances, that being in deep debt is a bad thing, and granted, for individuals being deep in debt is certainly not a good thing. However, the federal government is NOT a single individual on a fixed income. Unlike you or me, nobody is EVER going to be sending a repo man to the Capitol, and there's a reason for that, as explained below.
The federal budget is finance on an astronomically huge scale, big enough that only a handful of people, who ALL work at the Federal Reserve, fully understand. The average American has NO idea how that shit works, and frankly I don't entirely get it either, but I'm not talking about the whole budget, I'm talking specifically about the deficit, which the average American has COMPLETELY the wrong idea about. And so I'm now going to explain the federal deficit in the simplest possible terms so all of you people can stop complaining about it.
So what is the federal deficit? Very simply, it's future taxes. That's it. That's all it is. It's taxes that have not been collected YET. It really is that simple. If that doesn't do it for you, if you require a simple analogy to spell it out for you, here you go: It's like having a credit card with no limit that will NEVER get cut off. You take that credit card and run up $1000, and when the bill comes the next month, you can either pay the whole grand, or you could just pay $10 a month for forever and keep spending. That being the case, WHY WOULD YOU EVER PAY OFF THE BALANCE? Considering that you could NEVER get cut off, it makes no sense at all to pay off that balance, right? So it really doesn't matter how big the tally is, just keep on spending that money forever. You're probably trying to poke holes in this in your head right now, but I assure you, it really is that simple. Therefore, the federal deficit is ABSOLUTELY AND COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS.
It doesn't matter how far the federal government overspends. Really, it's just something that the minority party uses to attack the majority, no matter which one is which. When Bill Clinton was in office, the Republicans couldn't stop fucking with him about it, even though he effectively erased the deficit. And ever since Bush has been in office, the Democrats have been complaining about HIM running up the debt. And yet it makes no difference at all. Sure, that's a really huge and scary number when you look at where the deficit is, but I assure you, it's just political bullshit. The federal government currently takes in roughly two and a quarter TRILLION dollars annually. The only situation in which the deficit would become an issue is if 50% of all Americans suddenly became unemployed and never bought anything again. And even in that EXTREMELY unlikely situation, the government would NOT cease to function, it probably wouldn't even miss a beat, because of the reason described above, that the deficit is MEANINGLESS.
So there it is, the federal deficit explained. Please feel free to take my head off on this one, but I've only explained it to you the way it was explained to me from a VERY reputable and knowledgable source.
A week or so ago I was at work and one of my co-workers walked in and immediately started bitching to me about President Bush.
"Do you know what that asshole is doing?" he said to me, "He's just running up the national debt, doing favors for his friends. We had a SURPLUS a few years ago, and now we're deeper in debt than ever before!"
Like most people when confronted with the subject of the federal deficit I rolled my eyes at him, but he just wouldn't stop. This guy is my friend and I like him just fine, but people who bitch about the deficit are only demonstrating their ignorance on the subject. Not wanting to get into an argument, I just nodded my head and listened for a few minutes then slowly backed away.
The problem with the deficit is NOT the deficit itself, but rather peoples' perception, or more accurately their MISperception of what the deficit is. Uninformed laymen, as the VAST majority of Americans are, tend to think of the federal deficit in terms of their own finances, that being in deep debt is a bad thing, and granted, for individuals being deep in debt is certainly not a good thing. However, the federal government is NOT a single individual on a fixed income. Unlike you or me, nobody is EVER going to be sending a repo man to the Capitol, and there's a reason for that, as explained below.
The federal budget is finance on an astronomically huge scale, big enough that only a handful of people, who ALL work at the Federal Reserve, fully understand. The average American has NO idea how that shit works, and frankly I don't entirely get it either, but I'm not talking about the whole budget, I'm talking specifically about the deficit, which the average American has COMPLETELY the wrong idea about. And so I'm now going to explain the federal deficit in the simplest possible terms so all of you people can stop complaining about it.
So what is the federal deficit? Very simply, it's future taxes. That's it. That's all it is. It's taxes that have not been collected YET. It really is that simple. If that doesn't do it for you, if you require a simple analogy to spell it out for you, here you go: It's like having a credit card with no limit that will NEVER get cut off. You take that credit card and run up $1000, and when the bill comes the next month, you can either pay the whole grand, or you could just pay $10 a month for forever and keep spending. That being the case, WHY WOULD YOU EVER PAY OFF THE BALANCE? Considering that you could NEVER get cut off, it makes no sense at all to pay off that balance, right? So it really doesn't matter how big the tally is, just keep on spending that money forever. You're probably trying to poke holes in this in your head right now, but I assure you, it really is that simple. Therefore, the federal deficit is ABSOLUTELY AND COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS.
It doesn't matter how far the federal government overspends. Really, it's just something that the minority party uses to attack the majority, no matter which one is which. When Bill Clinton was in office, the Republicans couldn't stop fucking with him about it, even though he effectively erased the deficit. And ever since Bush has been in office, the Democrats have been complaining about HIM running up the debt. And yet it makes no difference at all. Sure, that's a really huge and scary number when you look at where the deficit is, but I assure you, it's just political bullshit. The federal government currently takes in roughly two and a quarter TRILLION dollars annually. The only situation in which the deficit would become an issue is if 50% of all Americans suddenly became unemployed and never bought anything again. And even in that EXTREMELY unlikely situation, the government would NOT cease to function, it probably wouldn't even miss a beat, because of the reason described above, that the deficit is MEANINGLESS.
So there it is, the federal deficit explained. Please feel free to take my head off on this one, but I've only explained it to you the way it was explained to me from a VERY reputable and knowledgable source.
