Candy from Babies

If pure socialism were instituted suddenly in this country, the near-universal descent into grinding poverty would be brutal and quick. Current creators of goods and services would have no reason, moral or economic, to provide anything for sale, knowing it would be confiscated and given to someone deemed more needy. As wishy-washy as we have become, we citizens still wouldn't allow that to happen.

The strategy instead has been stealth. The gradual ramping up of tax rates over decades has acclimated us all to a burden we would have vigorously refused a few decades ago. But, alas, politicians cannot get all the money they want to spend because that strategy has played out. They know that other sources of money have to be tapped. To that end, they steal from future generations. They can do that because those yet to be born cannot object. As the national debt (now 82% of GDP) grows, our ability to pay it back at all nears zero. The question is not if the system will crash, but when.

We got here because we as a people are largely ignorant of how the government steals from us and our children. The smoke-and-mirrors illusion that passes for fiscal management can only be sustained as long as we are gullible enough to fall for it. Every time we let pass without a thundering public outcry the nationalization of an industry (automakers), the bailing out of virtually an entire industry (big banks), and the promise of yet another unaffordable entitlement program (health care), we are partners in crime.

I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to explain to my two sons why we left them working nine-tenths of every year to pay back with interest money we spent. I don't want to have to tell them that we had a chance to stop the insanity and didn't. I don't want to see a once proud and free country descend into tyranny and poverty because we were lured by the seductive pull of something for nothing.

How about you?