The
chickens have come home to roost
I have chosen to be a
Republican because I believe that it is
the party that will most likely advocate
for fiscal responsibility in government.
In this time of great national
debt, many of our citizens have come to
the realization that the continued
borrowing of over 40% of what we spend
to maintain our federal government is
simply unsustainable.
We have created a social safety
net that has transferred individual
financial responsibility for our own
retirement and medical needs to future
generations.
This has come about largely
because the taxes we have paid to create
social security have been used to fund a
myriad of other programs.
The FICA taxes that we see on our
paychecks are supposed to fund our
Social Security program.
Our congress has not been able to
put this money aside for the purposes it
was intended.
There has been the temptation to
think that the obligations it was to
fund could be covered by future
generations’ contributions to the
system.
This meant there was “free” money
available to fund government programs
without raising taxes to pay for them.
While the analogy
can fall apart eventually, this does
seem very much like a Ponzi scheme.
A Ponzi
scheme is
a
fraudulent investment
operation that pays returns to its
investors from their own money or the
money paid by subsequent investors,
rather than from profit earned by the
individual or organization running the
operation.
Our
politicians have been enticing us to
support them by giving us “big
government” programs (we now call these
entitlements) using funds they didn’t
really have, hoping that the Ponzi
scheme wouldn’t eventually fall apart.
The funding of our
entitlement programs is the most obvious
form of a government Ponzi scheme.
Even the
most ardent tax and spend fiscal
liberals wouldn’t stand for the tax
rates that would be required if we were
to have to pay as we go for our social
programs.
While these
national programs seem to get the most
attention, they are by no means the only
form of the government Ponzi scheming.
State and
local governments cannot be quite so
obvious when deferring the cost of a
government program.
They cannot
borrow or run deficits like the federal
government.
Instead,
unpaid benefits for its citizens can
come in the form of deferred
maintenance.
A great example of
this can be seen it the local dynamics
of the issue of increased rates for
water in the City of Walsenburg.
Quite
simply put, the city water consumers
have been getting water at below cost
for a number of years.
Maintenance
was deferred and actual costs not passed
on to the users.
This is
unsustainable and the city now finds it
cannot continue this practice.
Unfortunately, there has been a quite
vocal backlash from the rate payers.
“We can’t
afford this on our fixed incomes” say
the retired and elderly.
I too am
retired and on a fixed income.
But as a
fiscal conservative who is trying to be
philosophically consistent, I welcome
the opportunity to pay for what I am
receiving and not continue to defer the
cost of what I am benefitting from to
the next generation of water users in
Walsenburg.
I
congratulate the city council and
administration for finally stepping up
and recognizing that we must deal with
this.
Ah!, if
congress could only be so bold.
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