Henri Reynard Speaks Out

When do We Begin to Sacrifice in Order to Create a Better World?

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The last time I checked, the bill that we will leave for future generations was growing at a substantial rate. The national debt seems likely to explode over the next decade. The rush to spend our children's money is perfectly understandable, they have certainly spent enough of ours. On the other hand we are threatening to expand the deficit substantially enough over the next five years to stick our grandchildren with a massive national debt at birth. Larger than any we have created during our profligate lives thus far. Do those sweet little trusting children really deserve this present?

The mind-numbing numbers being bandied about remind me of freshman math in high school, when I first approached the concept of infinity with the brilliant ignorance of the young. Any number divided by zero will give you infinity as an answer. Remember that fact, there will be a test later. Trillions of dollars are being spent by people who never learned that there are limits on what you can spend on Tuesday when payday is on Friday. Unless you want to ask the local shylock for a loan, that is, a dubious tactic at best.

Now I am no less willing to spend my children's legacies than the next guy, maybe even a little more willing. The new BMW looks so much nicer than my five-year-old Honda, Hmmm. On the other hand not watching the Beamer be towed away for failure to pay the bills each month might be incentive enough to keep my grasp within the bounds of my reach. I know it is my responsibility to hold up this economy by consuming more and more in an unending spiral of acquisition. I still wonder what happened to the practical values I was taught in the freshman business class that followed math in my schedule. One of them was the simple fact that just because you can borrow money doesn't mean that you should grab it before the offer is withdrawn.

The weirdest thing is people who call themselves conservatives are the ones pushing the spending beyond what we could possibly collect next year. That would be true even if we didn't offer another tax cut up as a sacrifice to the gods of economics. Since when does Shiva, in the guise of destroyer, guide our economic policies? Strapping our children and grandchildren to the wheel of progress in a consumer funded economy is bad enough. Putting the cement shoes on their feet before their swimming lesson in the swamp of finance seems like gratuitous cruelty. We don't even need Guido in this scenario to make their futures grimmer than ours were at any point thus far in our lives. I fear the invention of a time machine because my great grandchildren are likely to come back in time and shoot the old dope who allowed this to happen to them.

We are unlikely to change direction any time soon. We have elected people who never heard of the concept of saving money. The interest on the national debt could exceed a half a trillion dollars per year in our lifetimes. What a lovely number, five percent of the current national gross domestic product per year will have to be collected from our children and grandchildren as taxes to pay that bill. Otherwise the national debt will grow faster because we borrowed the money to pay the interest on that debt, a patently unwise business practice.

There is nothing simpler than the dictum that spending more than you make is a great strategy for winding up broke at some time in the future. People who live within their income are as rare in this economy as the proverbial honest politician. The definition of an honest politician that I learned in the freshman civics class was not someone who stays bought once he accepts your money. That is increasingly what we see in the world of politics today. People bought and paid for passing out public funds and granting private franchises. Franchises are being granted which will inevitably tax the public's ability to pay for the services and goods that keep our economy going.

So is the answer for our children's legacy infinite debt if the problem is to divide the tax burden we are creating by zero tax contributions? Zero would seem to be the goal of companies and individuals at the top of the income ladder. Remember I told you there would be a test. There are days when I pray for a time machine so the next several generations can have a chance to clear up the problem at its source. There are other times when I think they deserve whatever they get for choosing their grandparents so unwisely.