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Learning The Value
of a (Billion) Dollar(s)
by Mad Dog
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The national debt, for those of you who are too busy
scouring the entertainment section to find out when American Idol Losers
On Ice is coming to town to bother reading the news, is basically the
government’s credit card bill, except it doesn’t earn frequent flier
miles. |
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When I was young, my
parents spent a lot of time trying to teach me the value of a dollar,
right alongside the lessons about the joy of being able to walk across a
bedroom without needing snowshoes to stay on top of the dirty clothes,
the redeeming social value of washing behind one’s ears, and that
feeding mothballs to a goldfish is a bad idea. Luckily, most of these
lessons took. Okay, so I sometimes forget that I have two ears. Hey, no
one’s perfect.
Their lectures on fiscal
responsibility consisted of three points: money doesn’t grow on trees,
the harder you work the more money you’ll make, and no, you can’t
have a bigger allowance no matter how much money Bobby Durkin claims
he’s socking away in a retirement account from his. As it turns out,
they were right about two out of three points — all I get when I work
harder is tireder — which is pretty good, though I’d rather you
didn’t tell anyone I’m giving my parents so much credit or I’ll be
tossed out of the League of Ungrateful Children. Me, the president, of
all people.
I discovered firsthand that money
doesn’t actually grow on trees. Well, not unless you live on a farm
anyway. I’m not sure what parents who own an apple orchard tell their
kids. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” would seem appropriate
though it wouldn’t teach them a thing about money. Or medicine. I
found out how true the adage is after I planted dollar bills in the
backyard only to find that instead of them sprouting into seedlings, my
older brother was in the corner store buying big bags of candy with very
dirty money. Yes, life’s lessons can be difficult ones.
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In other words, we’re going deeper in the hole each month
than GM managed to do in a whole year. And they say the government is
inefficient.
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So how are we supposed to teach our children the value of a
dollar, especially when the Federal government and big business are
setting highly visible bad examples? Take GM. The company recently
announced that it lost $38.7 billion last year. Yes, that’s billion
with a “B.” Considering they sold 9,369,52 cars worldwide, that
means they managed to lose $4,130.41 on each car they sold. It’s a
good thing sales were down or they would have really gone into debt. You
know, like our government. When it does this it’s called the national
debt.
The national debt, for those of you
who are too busy scouring the entertainment section to find out when
American Idol Losers On Ice is coming to town to bother reading the
news, is basically the government’s credit card bill, except it
doesn’t earn frequent flier miles, reward points, or get cash back on
every T- Bill issued. The way it works is that if the government needs
more money, say to build a few bridges, pay our Congressmen, or start a
quick and dirty war in — oh, let’s say Iraq — that could make the
Hundred Years’ War feel like shock and awe, they just borrow it. When
these obligations come due, they go out and borrow more money, using it
to pay off the first ones. If I did this it would be called a Ponzi
Scheme and I’d be arrested. When the federal government does it it’s
called good fiscal policy. Go figure.
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If
the government is going to borrow the money so they can give it to us,
then have us pay it back out of our taxes, why don’t they just hold
onto it in the first place? They could use it to help pay down the
national debt and if we want, we can borrow our own $600. |
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The government is currently in debt to the tune of about $9.3
trillion. In case you’re counting, that’s 93 followed by 11 zeros.
With four commas thrown in for good measure. Just in case that’s not
enough of a shock when the statement shows up each month, the figure is
growing. By about $1 million a minute to be exact, which is a whopping
$1.4 billion a day. Sure that’s only $4.61 per day for every man,
woman, and child in the country who would rather spend it on a Big Mac
combo meal, but like calories, it adds up. In other words, we’re going
deeper in the hole each month than GM managed to do in a whole year. And
they say the government is inefficient.
Soon the national debt is going to
increase by $168 billion in one fell swoop, this so the government can
give each of us $600 as a reward for being a nice citizen living in a
not nice economy. It’s called an economic stimulus package and the
hope is that we’ll run out and spend our windfall like a kid who’s
handed his allowance in a toy store rather than doing what we should do,
like pay off a credit card bill, give it to the bank so they don’t
foreclose on our house, or donate it to a presidential candidate who
hopefully can do a better job of handling our government’s money.
It just doesn’t make sense. After
all, if the government is going to borrow the money so they can give it
to us, then have us pay it back out of our taxes, why don’t they just
hold onto it in the first place? They could use it to help pay down the
national debt and if we want, we can borrow our own $600. Or they could
use it to fund a study to discover ways of actually making money grow on
trees. Then they could subsidize money farmers to grow more of it, use
the surplus to repay the national debt, and if there’s any left over,
it can be converted to ethanol so corn doesn’t wind up selling for
$1.00 an ear. Hey, with ideas like this, who needs to work harder?
©2008 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country.
Read them instead of that loan application.
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