The poor and budget cutting.

We are looking at America finally being in a position where she can no longer pay the new bills that have been piled on her. There are about enough straws to break the camels back and the DC Ruling class is still adding straws.

It would seem to those of us who have been personally successful in budgeting in our own lives that what is needed is to cut spending, or get a second job, or both. While the federal government can't get a second job they can raise taxes. They can also cut regulations that keep us from tapping our national resources such as oil, coal and farm ground.

The first option of raising taxes will be tried, but it will not work. The first problem is that the lower income half of earners pay no taxes, and will not be asked to get some skin in the game that would connect them to the pain of wasted spending. They would sooner raise taxes on the rich by which they mean anyone who makes more than they do.

In Africa a missionary friend of mine told me they can tell a man is rich because "he has meat twice a week instead of twice a year." The poor in Europe are much better off than that and can hardly be called poor by Biblical standards; the poor in America have a higher standard of living than the poor in Europe. Many have two cars, a flat-screen TV, a a lot of living space. There are exceptions, but this is the rule.

Next, we have the aged folks; as a group they tend to have more wealth than any other group, but they also include those with no means of providing for themselves and no ability left to do so. They are also becoming a group that is proportionately larger than it ever was because of the baby boom followed by the baby bust followed by advances in medicine that have extended many lives.

The population explosion increase in not happening because people are multiplying like rabbits, but rather because we are no longer dropping like flies soon after retiring. The advances in medicine have also make it possible for men to stay in the workforce much longer. Probably less than 5% of the men nearing retirement still work with their hands so if the retirement age were lifted one year, two years or even 3 years it would hardly be an unbearable hardship.

So while a sane nation would cut military expenditures by 1/3 by withdrawing from Libya right away. We could also come to the conclusion that there is no reason to be fighting the Taliban now that we have killed or captured most of the men who plotted against us including their cult leader Osama Bin Ladin. A sane nation would also dramatically cut the amount of money that goes to the fake poor and focus taxed dollars on those who truly are starving and can do nothing for themselves.

But that is not what is going to happen; too many people (the ruling class) have too much invested in the status quo. So those with defense contracts (and interests in the Mid East) will fund publications that will scream bloody murder. Many of them will also undercut efforts to drill for our own oil. The Democrats will lie about cuts, who gets what, and how bad they need it and how incapable they are of surviving without more government money let alone less.

I've noticed the poor have enough money to have turned Mexico into a drug-running Heck hole so I'm just sure that cuts can be made. In the mean time they won't so expect massive inflation, further loss in the means of production, and a bigger debt crisis than ever. If you don't have some means of production now, some tools with which you can produce a product, a place to plant a garden, then I suggest you go out and get them if you can while you still can because some time within the next few years things will get ugly and the only way we will see it through is if there is a population ready to support themselves.