Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.politics.misc
From: kwee@oracle.uucp (Karl Wee)
Subject: Death of America 4
Reply-To: kwee@oracle.uucp (Karl Wee)
Organization: Oracle Corporation, Belmont, CA
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 10:39:06 GMT
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More response to responses about the national debt killing the US economy.

- Cutting federal budgets across the board by default --> 16.5% unemployment.

You have a point.  Perhaps I should modify my original proposal to allow
increasing taxes, so politicians could also spare cuts by the same
amount of extra taxes raised.  This "extra taxes", however, MUST be figured
using the MOST conservative estimate, unlike the good ol' days of cheating
through estimation.  One could also allow asking the Federal Reserve to
buy some govt. bonds (equivalent to printing money) and thereby using
modest inflation to remove another part of the deficit.

But the idea is still that the deficit is the very first priority, and
cuts + total funds raised must make the govt. follow a strict path which
eliminates the deficit in a few years.  Unless voters have a strict set of
milestones (in year x, the ACTUAL, NOT BUDGETED deficit shall be y) to
gauge the government with, there's no way ANYTHNG can get done, judging from
the past conduct of politicians.  If politicans don't like being held
against the wall, they don't have to keep their jobs.

It's going to be painful  no matter how we mix the bag.  But this kind of
controlled pain is qualitatively different from
what we get if we let the situation completly go out of control and
people completely lose their senses.  If we keep things
under control people will understand better why they're losing their jobs,
etc. and won't make things worse by going into a complete financial panic
and voting stupidly for political opportunists.  The idea is that the
govt. and people educated enough to understand these issues must remain in
control and give out the perception of being in control!


- [again] Liquidate the federal govt.  It is a welfare state with no practical
  value at present.  Default on the debt.  I didn't vote for the policies
  that led to this mess, so I'm not responsible.

This is wrong no matter which way you look at it.

1. The federal debt represents REAL PEOPLE holding sometimes most of their
   lives' savings in US bonds through pension funds, retirement accounts,
   etc.  Can you imagine the amount of anger and undeserved suffering that
   results -- suffering that goes to those who saved for the future?  What
   this will do to our national psyche and future behavior toward each
   other is anyone's guess.  But I don't want to see what it's like.

2. Government, the supposed upholder of the fabric of society would have
   violated one of the most fundamental rules of behavior necessary for
   modern life: pay back what you owe.  This rule of behavior is the nut and
   bolt of life as we know it.  It is the basic building block that holds
   the system of perceptions and behaviors together to make division of
   labor possible.  To undermine this rule is to make our lives worse
   in the future in infinite and unpredictable ways.  Once govt has done
   it (which I believe it won't because of the massive potential suffering)
   life will never be the same again no matter what people do and say
   because a basic trust has been broken.

   In fact, even the WHISPERING of defaulting by the govt. will send the
   financial markets into convulsions.  However, if peole keep ignoring
   the deficit some whispering might bring some chaos to the markets and
   bring people to their senses by giving them a TASTE of the magnitude of
   this problem before it actually hits.

We're trapped in a very difficult situation where whatever "quick fixes" we
can think of will make things worse by breaking things we depend on.

- Karl Wee
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian