The availability of credit is what makes a capitalistic society function. However, with anything, even ice cream, too much of a good thing can turn bad. We now have a national debt of 38 trillion dollars and climbing every day. People in power say nothing bad has happened so far, just like the guy falling off a tall building says on the way down. Few people can even remember the last president to run a budget surplus and pay down on the debt, William Jefferson Clinton. Within one year Vice President Dick Cheney when asked about government expenditures said, “Reagan proved that budget deficits don’t matter” and we have been off to the races ever since.
For years political commentators alleged the democrats were big spenders and voters would then bring in republicans to close the party down and get things under control. Now they both frolic like a rock star with the spending machine. However, the real problem is all of us, the citizens. We have come to want everything for free and we want to not have to pay for it with taxes. So, the bartender just put it on the tab and by the way, another round for everybody.
I remember my father talking about the 1920’s when his stepfather died leaving him at 12 years old as the breadwinner for him and his mother on a 75 acre farm. He got a job riding the lead mule for Mr. John Tyner’s roadbuilding crew working on a large dirt scraper. This was the closing era of the Gilded Age when the urban well off ruled the country and rural farmers were going broke due to the worldwide oversupply of farm crops. The rich were feasting on the roaring stock market along with easy credit supplied by brokerage houses to buy more stock. It was a story as old as the ages where a mania takes hold and people think wealth can simply be created out of the air while the less informed struggle to survive by going to work each day.
