meet the new boss, same as the old boss

living sounds said:

JohnRoberts said:

I miss the good old days when we could ignore the federal government between elections, but now they've made such a mess of things its difficult.

Click to expand...

When exactly were the good old days? 50-60 years ago, when states could discriminate against people based on skin color, gender, disability,...? Or 10 years ago, when a president took a nation to war on fabricated evidence, killing tens of thousands (at least), wasting billions, violating the Consitution left, right and center? Or 4 years ago, when decades of made-up economic "theory" culminated in a near-fatal crash of the world economy - problems of which we are all still suffering to this day?

Click to expand...

Thank you for providing some useful examples.

While I was mainly making an observation about myself, I miss when "I" could ignore the government for 4 years at a time.

While I was around 60 years ago, I was not paying much attention to government just yet. A few years later, thanks to a childhood hobby listening to short wave radio, I learned about propaganda and spin first hand from listening to english language broadcasts from Radio Moscow and Radio Havana. So learning to think for myself and not believe everything I read or hear, was a skill acquired at a pretty young age.

For now we have one very pressing issue.... How much should we tax? How much should we borrow? and How much should we spend?  Political actors will try to make this just about just one of those three elements but they are are inextricably linked to each other and must be balanced against each other. 

Besides, in the last two years the legislative branch of the federal government has essentially done nothing thanks to unprecidented obstructionisim from the right.

Click to expand...

Unprecedented... ? Is this time different somehow? Our government is designed with multiple checks and balances. What you call obstructionism is the natural ebb and flow of power.  Talking a longer view it's easy to recall how Clinton learned to work with a republican legislature in his second term.  Also how Bush was stuck with a democratic legislature in the last years leading up to the credit collapse, which I put more like 5 years ago than 4.

Don't believe your own fairy tales...

Click to expand...

I'm entitled to my fairy tales (personal observation), just like you are yours.

For now we need to ignore these distractions and put pressure on our government, both parties, to stop all the public posturing and act adult for a change. They need to lock the actual decision makers into a single room and don't let them out until they privately make some hard decisions (that is their job after all).

I see no way out of this hole without people on both sides being upset with the decision. We are running out of opportunities to keep postponing the consequences of not bringing all three legs (tax,borrow,spend) of our fiscal house into balance.

It really is this simple, but it will be hard, to make the political rhetoric from both sides match up to the economic reality.

JR