Home   Table of Contents   Previous Chapter   Next  Chapter

Chapter 22
Should the federal government increase the debt or savings it is carrying, keep it at the current amount, or reduce it?

Aside from its representing the sacrifice of the future for the present—including our children’s future!—the main objection to government debt is that everyone’s hard-earned tax money goes into the pockets of the rich both here and abroad in the form of interest paid on the debt rather than into useful actions.

This is very likely why the national debt is never paid off. Wealth owns and populates government and serves itself well by maintaining a perpetual national debt. What a scam! First Wealth creates a tax system so full of loopholes and evasions for itself that what should and is claimed to be a progressive tax, taxing the rich at a higher rate than the middle class and the working poor, is turned instead into a regressive tax, effectively taxing the middle class and the poor at a higher rate than the rich. Then, when the government disburses and expends the collected tax revenue, Wealth takes a huge cut off the top in the form of enormous amounts of interest paid on the national debt. Further, by the time Wealth fills its pockets with lucrative government contracts and all of the upper classes participating in government take home their pay and perks little real money reaches the truly poor. Therefore, the disbursements and expenditures of our tax dollars by government are also regressive in that they benefit the wealthy more than the poor. This is all, of course, to be expected of our American plutocracy.

The rationale for including the national debt issue within the demos is to give all of us the opportunity to stop handing the rich our tax money in the form of interest on the debt by eliminating the debt. Of course, the possibility exists that an undisciplined demos might increase the national debt. But at least then we could point the finger at no one but ourselves.

It is simply foolish to carry debt. Yes, our screwy tax system can and does make debt a ‘rational’ choice for business and individuals, but 1) that tax system ought not exist and 2) even with all of the tricks that one can play, debt is more often than not the road to economic imprisonment and financial ruin. That our leaders in government have long held our nation in a permanent state of debt and have almost overnight thrown it into the position of being the world’s greatest debtor nation is sheer insanity.

This demos issue is stated: Should the federal government increase the debt or savings it is carrying, keep it at the current amount, or reduce it?  If it were operated in a rational manner, government would not carry debt but an enormous amount of savings. The government embodies all of us, or at least it should. Its savings is our savings. We as a nation, via the federal government, should have enormous savings on hand which we lend out to collect interest. That interest should be used to fund part of the government’s annual operating expenses. This would allow a decrease in the amount of money it would need to acquire each year via taxation. Government savings would also provide the resources for the budget buffers described in the previous chapter. And savings would provide the funds needed to help the nation through emergencies such as natural disasters.

At any rate, along with the word debt the word savings is included in this demos issue as a wishful thought.

This issue’s demos page would be of the three button style with an up arrow for “Increase the debt or savings,” below that a square or rectangle for “Keep at the current amount of debt or savings,” and below that a downward-pointing arrow for “Decrease the debt or savings.”

Home   Table of Contents   Previous Chapter   Next Chapter   Top of Page
 

Beyond Plutocracy - Direct Democracy for America    www.BeyondPlutocracy.com
© Copyright 2001   Roger D Rothenberger    All rights reserved.