A Second Opinion On Gargantuan Borrowings
Yesterday, we growled “that each American household now has liabilities of $668,661, which includes a federal debt of $546,668 and personal debt of $121,953,” according to calculations by USA Today and supplemented by observations by Investor’s Business Daily.
Victor Davis Hanson, a senior research fellow in the classics and military history at the Hoover Institution is leading a tour of the “vanquished civilizations of the Mediterranean” through Rome, Crete and Athens. He posted some “reflections on an age now fading . . . at Pajamas Media earlier this week, including this:
“From time to time I meet individuals who feel that the United States as they have known it is changing before their eyes, and therefore they have sunk into a terrible depression. They cite a litany of horrors.
“Take the economy: the liberal attack on Bush as a reckless spender who increased the debt by $2 trillion is now replaced by ’stimulus’ groupies, who are silent about a staggering $9 trillion of Obama debt to come. Cannot the country, the media-anyone!-see that the amounts of borrowing are so gargantuan that we are talking about massive changes in the US economy and lifestyle? The size and inefficiency of the government will grow. We will have soon some sort of national sales taxes on top (of) state, local, and federal higher rates, the point being threefold: more recipients and distributors of entitlements mean larger liberal permanent constituents-an institutionalization of the welfare state. The debts are so large that it will require a redistribution of income through higher taxes. When a Paul Krugman writes seriously that California’s financial meltdown (9% sales, 10% income taxes) is due to too low taxation (as hundreds of thousands of overtaxed skilled professionals flee the state), then one can see how the power of ideology in the present age so easily trumps empiricism. Three, the debts will end American exceptionalism abroad, and severely curtail our options. In other words, we are seeing the much waited for multilateralism-but by financial default! What depresses is the fact that debt is now being used as a political tool-to reconstitute American culture and society, both at home and abroad.” (emphasis added)
It's difficult to be more observant that that.