On The Debt Ceiling Debate: Is The Sky Falling If The Sky Is Not The Limit?

What exactly do we Americans think real change looks like when it finally arrives?  

Do we believe it is something that just happens, without personal struggle or pain, or without a summons into the unknown and the uncertain? 

Do we think change consists of one of our megalomaniacal politicians with nice hair, an Ivy League degree, and presidential ambitions standing in front of a TV camera mouthing sweet-sounding bromides off a Teleprompter while all the while enjoying a lifetime pension, Cadillac health care, and caviar paid for by the U. S. taxpayer?

I’ve got news for us: the only change worthy of the name is brought about by men and women who have faith, courage, and the willingness to suffer at the personal level to bring change about. 

And frankly, outside the Tea Party, I don’t see many of these types of people in Washington, or on Meet the Press, or on the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times.

What I do see among the American professional political class and their acolytes in the mainstream media are a lot of well-off, well-fed, selfish gasbags, at once desirous of fame yet fearful of failure, and unwilling to make personal sacrifices themselves. 

And these are our "leaders"?   

Now to the Debt Ceiling debate.

I’ve noticed that many of these "prudent" establishment types now warning Americans of dire consequences should we fail to raise the debt ceiling are people who depend upon government themselves. I’ve also noticed that they are many of the same people who have been propagating for years many of the wrong-headed predictions that have worked against the common good since the end of WW II, such as: that Soviet Communism is morally equivalent to democratic capitalism and is here to stay; that the Berlin Wall is never coming down in our lifetime; that Mao, Stalin, Fidel Castro, and so many others are not Communist despots but merely benign "agrarian reformers"; that if we only stopped the war in Vietnam and spent the money on America's inner cities, poverty would disappear; that government exists to help us; that drug use among adults is harmless and victimless; that the sexual revolution will not involve any human road kill; that Ronald Reagan is not Presidential material and, if elected, will start WW III; that the epidemic of AIDS engulfing the homosexual community will soon engulf the married heterosexual community unless confiscatory taxes are imposed upon the latter in favor of the former; that planet earth will soon be gripped by a nuclear winter; that planet earth will soon be gripped by man-made Global Warming; that planet earth will soon be gripped by world-wide famine as a result of the population explosion; that Y2K will eat our computers and lead to societal convulsions; and that abortion will soon be widely accepted as it does not involve the taking of innocent unborn human life. 

These same faithless “Chicken Littles” are now predicting that America will experience calamity unless both the debt ceiling and taxes are raised.

My senior citizen's advice is this: Be Not Afraid. Let the whole corrupt temple come tumbling down, and let it happen now, on the Great Community Organizer's watch. Once that occurs, take advantage of the crisis to implement long overdue political and economic reforms, the cornerstone of which should be the wholesale scrapping of our existing Internal Revenue Code, whose pornographic complexity and inherent unfairness favors the rich, the powerful, and the dishonest, while at the same time discouraging honest labor and creating an untaxed underground economy estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

There are no Utopias, but replacing our melanoma of a tax system with something simpler and more fair, to which the simple, the honest, the hard-working, and the patriotic can repair, would work wonders. A fairer and simpler tax code would satisfy those on the Left who wish to soak the rich, increase revenues, shrink the defense budget, level the playing field, target large corporations, preserve essential social programs and save the middle class. At the same time it would please those on the Right who seek job creation, assistance to small businesses, revenue for national defense, the preservation of essential programs, reduced government, and preservation of the middle class.

The reform could either a simple flat tax, or, even better, a consumption tax - where the tax is paid for at the point of purchase and where, say, the first $30k per year per person in food, clothing, and shelter is exempt. A tax on consumption would encourage savings. It would also capture income from the tax-avoiding and tax-deferring rich. (A dodger like Senator John Kerry might still try to avoid paying his fair share by having his $7M yacht built in New Zealand; but I’m certain that revenue bloodhounds like Tim (“Pay Your Fair Share) Geitner would track him down.) 

Billionaires like Warren Buffet, the Koch brothers, and Bill Gates who can afford to hire batteries of tax accountants and tax lawyers to help them avoid paying taxes would no longer enjoy such advantages over the rest of us who cannot afford to hire such people. 

Isn’t that the American Way? 

Best of all, a point-of-purchase consumption tax would focus the public’s mind wonderfully on the true cost of government, by interposing the real cost of that government immediately between the consumer and his purchase. Put another way, the universe of taxpayers would now be coterminous with the universe of consumers, which is manifestly not the case today. Each time a citizen downloaded a video game or an iTunes, or purchased golf clubs, he would pay a tax to the feds. It wouldn’t take long for him to realize just how expensive all this government is. There would be an immediate peaceful uprising among the citizens of your country, and the size of government would shrink overnight. 

Bottom line: Hold the line (on the debt ceiling). Stand by for some heavy rolls. But after the squall and some sensible reform, look forward to fair winds and following seas.