Monday, August 1, 2011
Congressional Debt Crisis vs State-sponsored Gambling
Will anyone else note the odd juxtaposition of tonight's "60 Minutes" segment on state-sponsored gambling the very weekend Congress is imploding? We citizens have the budget crisis that we do because we choose to. We throw away resources on gambling, legal and not, state-sponsored and not, because we choose to. We don't pay the cost of having a 21st century government -- but instead borrow up to 40% of those costs -- because we choose to. We could tax ourselves adequately to pay for everything, as we proved in 1998-1999, if we wanted to. But we just don't want to. We want to hit the big payout. We'd like to fund gov't with OPM - (Other People's Money).
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Condensing all the factors that impact our national debt and federal obligations to a short “primer”, while perhaps possible, would require more time and effort than I’m currently prepared to donate to the project. The best professionally available explanations I’ve seen, relatively short if not a thumbnail sketch, comes from PEW. I’ll place the link below.
The other “quick and dirty” way to consider where we are is to look at our national debt amount and the individual year’s deficit vs. the amount of interest we are paying on the national debt for that year. Basically, in the minds of many economists, the years where our yearly deficit is less than the amount we are paying for interest on the accumulated federal debt we are not losing ground. Our available revenues are matching or exceeding our yearly operating expenses. In recent years the deficit has vastly exceeded the interest paid that year. That’s what increases our debt each year. The huge jump in the year’s deficit occurred the first year Obama took office, not because of profligate spending by him or Congress but due to the TARP efforts to stave off the economic collapse of America’s investment banking industry in 2008 -09.
As for the "gambling" aspect of original post, one cliche is worth repeating. Lotteries & casinos represent a "Stupid Person's Tax". Those who choose to throw their money away on this "recreational entertainment" should admit that they are not involuntarily taxed to a point beyond the pale. If they can afford this, they could easily afford to pay whatever is the needed tax to pay for levels of government services they expect from local, state and federal governments.
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