Guest Editorial

BY MENCKEN'S GHOST  |  JULY 27, 2011

Surprise: 58 percent support Obama’s deficit reduction “plan” and 60 percent are dependent on government

Years ago, when I was going through my delusional stage and thought that people would care as much about serious matters as they do about murder trials, I published my research showing that approximately 60 percent of voters are dependent on the government in some way.  The 60 percent live in households where the primary household income comes from welfare, entitlements, subsidies, a government job, or a private-sector job that depends on the regulatory state.  I predicted that so much dependency would bring the nation to fiscal and cultural ruin if not addressed.

It doesn’t surprise me, therefore, that a recent poll showed that 58 percent of Americans support President Obama’s non-plan plan for reducing the deficit.  Even my average intellect can grasp that the 58 percent might be related to the 60 percent.

To be fair to Obama, none of the plans, including the Republican plans and the plan of the Gang of Six, addresses the root cause of deficits--namely, fiat money that is not anchored in precious metals or in the Constitution, which unequivocally states that national money should be so anchored.  All anchors to precious metals and fiscal restraint were severed by Richard Nixon when he closed the gold window in 1971, based on the advice of Milton Friedman, of all people.  Ninety-seven percent of today’s worldwide debt of nation-states has been created since that closing.

The Federal Reserve is of course the enabling institution in the USA.  A love-child that was produced by the illicit mating between the government and private banks, the Fed allows politicians to spend money that the government doesn’t have and to enrich bankers in the sordid process.  Before he became Federal Reserve Chairman and sold his principles to the devil, Alan Greenspan warned that this illegitimate offspring would eventually devour all of the nation’s seed corn.  The current chairman, Ben Bernanke, also knows this but has made his own Faustian bargain, trading principles for fame and power.  The same with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who used to head the New York Fed and was too busy romping in bed with bankers to pay his taxes.

These guys are all geniuses, as measured by IQ and academic accomplishments.  They demonstrate that genius and scruples are two different things.     

The plan hatched by the Gang of Six has some good features, but it will do nothing about the problem of fiat money and the lovemaking between private banks and government.  It also has a horrible feature:  It proposes the elimination of the tax deferral on investment income earned on savings.  From an economics perspective, this is nutty, for it will remove an incentive to save money and thus deprive the nation of needed investment capital.  From a moral perspective, it is nuttier yet, for it will tax income twice:  once when earned and once when saved.

Speaking of morals, I’ve been studying the writings of the great moral philosophers all of my adult life, searching for the moral justification for the country’s social and tax policies.  There is no moral justification.  It simply isn’t moral for half of adults to pay no income taxes and to mooch off the other half, especially when at least two-thirds of the moochers are able-bodied and able-minded. 

Take a guy who picked his nose through school instead of studying, who never had any interest in making something of himself, who has never saved a nickel, and whose only interests are beer, bimbos, sports, tattoos, backward caps, a scruffy beard, and gambling.  There is no moral justification for him to vote to take money from a guy who grew up in the same circumstance but had a long-term outlook, lived below his means, invested in his future, and learned how to use a razor.

Yet Republicans are incapable of making a moral case against the welfare/entitlement state and somehow lose the moral argument to the collectivists and neo-Marxists in Congress, the White House, the media, and academia.  This is like losing a game of chess to a rodent.  (No offense to Rod Blagojevich, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Charlie Rangel.) 

Enough ranting for today.  In closing, here is a prediction:  58 percent of readers won’t like this commentary.  

“Mencken’s Ghost” is the nom de plume of an Arizona writer who can be reached at [email protected].