| | I'd go back even farther than 1991 for an illuminative comparison, and often have and will do it once more below, but will add a telling anecdote that others can easily confirm with their own experiences.
Andrea Mitchell just sneeringly asked, "Why does this nation have a debt ceiling?" She hasn't obviously looked at its historical rate of growth, and the clear signs that it is totally out of control and overwhelming the nation. She needs to be selling Avon somewhere to her family and friends, not commenting on national TV on the economies.
JFKs spending was about 100B, fully half of which was defense, at the peak of the Cold War, in a nation barely half our present size and that AMerica also funded Social Security.
We can CPI/inflation adjust that by x7.5 = 750B.
We can population adjust that by barely x2 = 1500B.
And then we can compare with the present out of all control 3800B of federal spending.
I have a distinct childhood memory of the early 60's. I lived in a high density neighborhood of lower/middle class factory workers. They were called 'row homes' back then, not 'town houses.' Tons of kids in that neighborhood.
One of them, like many of them, had a father who worked at 'the Steel.' (Bethlehem Steel.) He wasn't a skilled worker, he was a janitor. He swept the floors.
He had a wife and two kids, one of them, my friend 'Howie,' a year younger than me. I can distinctly remember being in his house, his kitchen, with his mother and father, on the day that his father first came home with a weekly paycheck in excess of $100. His father was ecstatic. He held the check in one hand, arm out in front of him, with his other arm around his wife's shoulders. She was crying, she was so happy. They were looking at that check as if they'd just won the lottery. He had a good job, he lived in a comfortable, clean house, in a decent neighborhood near a public school, with a playground full of happy kids, and they were providing for their family.
He lived in a nation that, at the peak of the COld War, spent about 100B a year in federal spending, with fully half of that being defense.
Scan ahead to 2011. His federal government, by way of our broken political process, gave itself a factor of 38 increase in spending. The population has barely doubled, but the federal budget has grown by a factor of 38. We can account for a rate of growth to 1500B, but not 3800B.
Ignore the fact that most of that accountable rate of growth is government induced endemic inflation, itself a broadbase regressive tax on the entire nation, including Howie's janitor father.
I want to hear modern day anecdotes of janitors in America, standing in their kitchen with their family, looking at their weekly paycheck for $3800/week with tears in their eyes.
But there are no such stories. In fact, increasingly, that guy doesn't even have a job, much less, a job paying him $100/week, much less, a job paying him $3800/week.
And yet, Howie grew up in an America where he and his would be taxed/borrowed from to pay for a 38 increase in federal bloat.
What happened to his America? The one where that guy had a prayer of providing for his family? Of being as happy as I saw his father being, in that kitchen, with his family(and even, local crumb cruncher)watching him celebrate his huge windfall -- a takehome check in excess of $100/week in the early 60s?
Howie grew up in an America that sent 12 men to the moon ... for 0.002 trillion per year over ten years, adjusted to maybe 0.03 trillion/year in 2011. Howie was inspired by that America.
Point to what our current children are inspired by that this bloated federal government does that justifies the extra 2.3Trillion a year our federal government reidstributes/extracts from the private economy above and beyond what JFK's America did at the height of the Cold War? (3800B vs. 1500B?>)
I asked this very question to my now 23 year old son just a year or so ago, as he was leaving university, and he just stared at me with no answer.
It was a shameful moment for me.
We get the government we tolerate, and we also deserve what we tolerate. I can't apologize to my own son nearly enough for tolerating so much for so long.
3800B vs 1500B: that is the clear difference between the early 60's and 2011. That is what has killed the engines of our once beast building economies.
How long will America tolerate this internal all front attack on not only prosperity, but freedom? They are the same thing.
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