Truth that no one wants to hear...but needs to hear LOUD AND CLEARLY!!!

America is going broke…slowly…irrevocably…without a doubt… and so we search for solutions to a problem that has blossomed since WWII and is now strangling us! We can try to ignore it…we can figure out how to profit from it …or… we can roll up our sleeves and fix it!!! Ignoring it will only hasten our demise!!! Profiting from it will only enrich a few at the expense of the many!!! And rolling up our sleeves will mean political suicide for those who finally do the necessary governing…it will mean that the governed will bleed…and the American Dream will…by necessity…die and re-emerge in a totally different definitive and operative mode!

The truth I refer to is, of course, the American National Debt!!

To listen to the current rhetoric is to listen to both a lie and a dream at the same time!! Some say just cutting spending will fix the problem while others  want to tax the rich!! The lie is that one or the other will fix the problem while the dream is that somehow it will  simply go away without serious pain to everyone

.
Before I go on, let me define a couple of terms as I understand them (if my definitions seem too simplistic then read the rest of this with a grain of salt and realize that I am NOT an economist…NOT a politician…NOT an expert on anything except life which has taught me a few things about the subject of living.)

1) DEFICIT SPENDING…as I understand it, it is the act of spending more than one has at the time the decision is made. EXAMPLE: I want to buy 1000 acres of land but only have financing available for 750 acres. If I commit to the 1000  acres, then I have deficit spent on the remaining 250 acres which in PRIVATE ENTERPRISE does not happen…at least if one is smart…Better to wait until I can do the deal with the proper financing or just not do the deal at all or I might invite a third party into the deal. But in GOVERNMENT an entirely different matrix has developed…slowly and now catastrophically…that if we want something , then we simply do it and 1) hope that revenues (taxes) will be there to pay for it or 2) actually raise revenues (TAXES…they are the SAME DAMN THING NO MATTER WHAT NOUN ONE USES!!!) or 3) we sell interest-bearing BONDS on the open market to fund the programs we have begun which then becomes part of the NATIONAL DEBT!!!
2) NATIONAL DEBT…the amount of money we have borrowed (BONDS OUTSTANDING) which must be (legally) paid back to the bond holders sooner or later.

We hear these terms so often and in so many sound bites that it is easy to become deaf to the implications of both until something happens to jerk our heads out of the sand and PAY ATTENTION!!! We have come to the abyss folks…looked over the edge…and then jumped anyway!!!  OUR  NATIONAL DEBT IS NOW RATED AT  AA!!!! And the implications are huge!!

Now!!! What to do about it is the question? That question is one that when properly answered is distasteful to all because to fix the problem we are going to have to redefine the AMERICAN DREAM…if such a thing ever existed in the first place…, raise revenues (TAXES) or cut programs and services we have addicted ourselves to as we have advanced as a society!!

And the blame is not simply one political party or one competing philosophy against another…the blame is on all of us as persons…as political voices…as corporations…and other institutions such as our educational, religious, and social institutions that have become myoptic and unyielding in their positions which now nearly makes a solution impossible to do!!!
I’m just a simple farmer but I will attempt to offer some solutions because not to do so will mean that I have given up on my country which has given me a very good life despite its sometimes silly ways!!
But before we can fix the problem we need to honestly assess how we got here in the first place which I will do in the next article I post.