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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] The GOP on government spending: Borrow 'til the Chinese own us!
  • Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 15:13:33 EDT

Concerning the article that started this thread, I'd have to say that the
Bush Bashers have made their case this time. How else could you characterize
the
present administration except 'Spend and Borrow'? Just because one is a Bush
Basher, it doesn't mean one is necessarily wrong.

But when I read the article, I got a chilling deja-vu; The point where
Connie Mack suffers a genuine vapor lock of the brain is this:

"CM: I am not worried about that. We are a huge country
producing enormous assets day in and day out. We have
great strength, and we have always adjusted to
difficulties that faced us, and we will continue to do
so. "

This is the EXACT same verbage the Social Security apologists use. In both
cases the fiscal impossibility of the financial burden being taken on is
pointed out not in speculation but in hard numbers, and when asked how we're
going
to pay for it all, there's a rosey, mohterhood and apple pie, all American
answer .... why, we've always paid our debts, found a way out of any mess,
never
let people down who were depending on us.

True, but our mouths have never made such promises as these that our
[behinds] can't make good on either.

As I've said, we've made too many promises we can't keep. Too many people
expecting to consume goods and services while not providing any. We're
aleady
getting a taste of what's to come. The airlines had to tell their retirees,
sorry, all that money we promised you for life, you won't be getting that.
The
auto industry is following suit telling their retirees that the life time
medical benefits they promised, sorry, turns out we can't do that. On a
financial radio show I was catching the other day an analyst was saying that
the US
auto industry can't survive paying $65 an hour in salary and benefits. A
caller, an autoworker, was irate telling the host that he was making the
usual union
wage of $22/hr and the company paid an average of $8/hr in benefits -- a long
way from the $65 figure being bandied about, buster!! The host verified that
the man's figures were correct but that the companies paid an average of
$35/hr for every hour of work done in the factories in benefits to retirees!
That's why the auto industry in the US teeters on the edge of insolvency.

So I see the arguments of the Bush administration to be the very same
arguments made by those who do not think that the lavish financial promises
being
made to all and sundry are in any real danger of default. They both are
saying
that we are so clever and trustworthy that come time to pay up, that an
ingenious way will be found like the 'Deus ex Machina'.

If we're going to somehow be able to work out these problems, including if
not especially Connie Mack's, by our great heart and ingenuity in the future,
they why, asks I, don't we apply those traits right now and solve it right
now
instead of passing down to the next decades?

James




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